chinks of the stones; for it had no earth, and nothing more like soil
than the crumbling mortar, which had been crammed into the crevices in a
long-past age.

Yet the plant seemed fond of its native site; and Donatello said it
had always grown there from his earliest remembrance, and never, he
believed, any smaller or any larger than they saw it now.

"I wonder if the shrub teaches you any good lesson," said he, observing
the interest with which Kenyon examined it. "If the wide valley has a
great meaning, the plant ought to have at least a little one; and it has
been growing on our tower long enough to have learned how to speak it."

"O, certainly!" answered the sculptor; "the shrub has its moral, or
it would have perished long ago. And, no doubt, it is for your use and
edification, since you have had it before your eyes all your lifetime,
and now are moved to ask what may be its lesson."

"It teaches me nothing," said the simple Donatello, stooping over the
plant, and perplexing himself with a minute scrutiny. "But here was a
worm that would have killed it; an ugly creature, which I will fling
over the battlements."





CHAPTER XXIX