the
little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over
the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.

Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted
lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made
his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the
shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the
Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that
had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been
born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we
should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.

But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly
have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the
future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no
imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an
affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of
average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their
neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things,
or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied
with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness
and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do
and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good
fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his
adversary?