"None," replied Donatello, speaking the simple truth. "It is like
looking a stranger in the face."
This frankly unfavorable testimony so wrought with the sensitive artist,
that he fell into a passion with the stubborn image, and cared not what
might happen to it thenceforward. Wielding that wonderful power which
sculptors possess over moist clay, however refractory it may show itself
in certain respects, he compressed, elongated, widened, and otherwise
altered the features of the bust in mere recklessness, and at every
change inquired of the Count whether the expression became anywise more
satisfactory.
"Stop!" cried Donatello at last, catching the sculptor's hand. "Let
it remain so!" By some accidental handling of the clay, entirely
independent of his own will, Kenyon had given the countenance a
distorted and violent look, combining animal fierceness with intelligent
hatred. Had Hilda, or had Miriam, seen the bust, with the expression
which it had now assumed, they might have recognized Donatello's face as
they beheld it at that terrible moment when he held his victim over the
edge of the precipice.
"What have I done?" said the sculptor, shocked at his own casual
production. "It were a sin to let the clay which bears your features
harden into a look like that. Cain never wore an uglier one."
"For that very reason, let it remain!" answered the Count, who had grown
pale as ashes at the aspect of his crime, thus strangely presented to
him in another of the many guises under which guilt stares the criminal
in the face. "Do not alter it! Chisel it, rather, in eternal marble!
I will set it up in my oratory and keep it continually before my eyes.
Sadder and more horrible is a face like this, alive with my own crime,
than the dead skull which my forefathers handed down to me!"
But, without in the least heeding Donatello's remonstrances, the
sculptor again applied his artful fingers to the clay, and compelled the
bust to dismiss the expression that had so startled them both.
"Believe me," said he, turning his eyes upon his friend, full of grave
and tender sympathy, "you know not what is requisite for your spiritual
growth, seeking, as you do, to keep your soul perpetually in the
unwholesome region of remorse. It was needful for you to pass through
that dark valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too
long; there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and brood in
it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency,
not slothful anguish, is what you now require,--but effort! Has there
been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with
good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity
for better things to partake its noisome corruption!"