第4章

"Signorina, I do not know," he answered; "no great age, however; for I have only lived since I met you.""Now, what old man of society could have turned a silly compliment more smartly than that!" exclaimed Miriam."Nature and art are just at one sometimes.But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello! Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being immortal on earth.If I could only forget mine!" "It is too soon to wish that," observed the sculptor; "you are scarcely older than Donatello looks.""I shall be content, then," rejoined Miriam, "if I could only forget one day of all my life." Then she seemed to repent of this allusion, and hastily added, "A woman's days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one of them out of the account."The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or poets, love to indulge.In this frame of mind, they sometimes find their profoundest truths side by side with the idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without distinguishing which is the most valuable, or assigning any considerable value to either.The resemblance between the marble Faun and their living companion had made a deep, half-serious, half-mirthful impression on these three friends, and had taken them into a certain airy region, lifting up, as it is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their heavy earthly feet from the actual soil of life.The world had been set afloat, as it were, for a moment, and relieved them, for just so long, of all customary responsibility for what they thought and said.

It might be under this influence--or, perhaps, because sculptors always abuse one another's works--that Kenyon threw in a criticism upon the Dying Gladiator.