"Ah, I have seen him at Florence," observed Kenyon. "He is a
necromancer, as you say, and dwells in an old mansion of the Knights
Templars, close by the Ponte Vecchio, with a great many ghostly books,
pictures, and antiquities, to make the house gloomy, and one bright-eyed
little girl, to keep it cheerful!"

"I know him only by his white beard," said Donatello; "but he could
have told you a great deal about the tower, and the sieges which it has
stood, and the prisoners who have been confined in it. And he gathered
up all the traditions of the Monte Beni family, and, among the rest,
the sad one which I told you at the fountain the other day. He had known
mighty poets, he said, in his earlier life; and the most illustrious
of them would have rejoiced to preserve such a legend in immortal
rhyme,--especially if he could have had some of our wine of Sunshine to
help out his inspiration!"

"Any man might be a poet, as well as Byron, with such wine and such
a theme," rejoined the sculptor. "But shall we climb your tower The
thunder-storm gathering yonder among the hills will be a spectacle worth
witnessing."

"Come, then," said the Count, adding, with a sigh, "it has a weary
staircase, and dismal chambers, and it is very lonesome at the summit!"

"Like a man's life, when he has climbed to eminence," remarked the
sculptor; "or, let us rather say, with its difficult steps, and the dark
prison cells you speak of, your tower resembles the spiritual experience
of many a sinful soul, which, nevertheless, may struggle upward into the
pure air and light of Heaven at last!"