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- chisel, the latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the
cloudings incident to casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now
revealed. Round and round the bell, twelve figures of gay girls,
garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral ring—the embodied hours.
“Bannadonna,” said the chief, “this bell excels all else. No added
touch could here improve. Hark!” hearing a sound, “was that the wind?”
“The wind, Excellenza,” was the light response. “But the figures, they
are not yet without their faults. They need some touches yet. When
those are given, and the—block yonder,” pointing towards the canvas
screen, “when Haman there, as I merrily call him,—him? _it_, I
mean—when Haman is fixed on this, his lofty tree, then, gentlemen, will
I be most happy to receive you here again.”
The equivocal reference to the object caused some return of
restlessness. However, on their part, the visitors forbore further
allusion to it, unwilling, perhaps, to let the foundling see how easily
it lay within his plebeian art to stir the placid dignity of nobles.
“Well, Bannadonna,” said the chief, “how long ere you are ready to set
the clock going, so that the hour shall be sounded? Our interest in
you, not less than in the work itself, makes us anxious to be assured
of your success. The people, too,—why, they are shouting now. Say the
exact hour when you will be ready.”
“To-morrow, Excellenza, if you listen for it,—or should you not, all
the same—strange music will be heard. The stroke of one shall be the
first from yonder bell,” pointing to the bell adorned with girls and
garlands, “that stroke shall fall there, where the hand of Una clasps
Dua’s. The stroke of one shall sever that loved clasp. To-morrow, then,
at one o’clock, as struck here, precisely here,” advancing and placing
his finger upon the clasp, “the poor mechanic will be most happy once
more to give you liege audience, in this his littered shop. Farewell
till then, illustrious magnificoes, and hark ye for your vassal’s
stroke.”
His still, Vulcanic face hiding its burning brightness like a forge, he
moved with ostentatious deference towards the scuttle, as if so far to
escort their exit. But the junior magistrate, a kind-hearted man,
troubled at what seemed to him a certain sardonical disdain, lurking
beneath the foundling’s humble mien, and in Christian sympathy more
distressed at it on his account than on his own, dimly surmising what
might be the final fate of such a cynic solitaire, nor perhaps
uninfluenced by the general strangeness of surrounding things, this
good magistrate had glanced sadly, sideways from the speaker, and
thereupon his foreboding eye had started at the expression of the
unchanging face of the Hour Una.
“How is this, Bannadonna?” he lowly asked, “Una looks unlike her
sisters.”
“In Christ’s name, Bannadonna,” impulsively broke in the chief, his
attention, for the first attracted to the figure, by his associate’s
remark, “Una’s face looks just like that of Deborah, the prophetess, as
painted by the Florentine, Del Fonca.”
“Surely, Bannadonna,” lowly resumed the milder magistrate, “you meant
the twelve should wear the same jocundly abandoned air. But see, the
smile of Una seems but a fatal one. ’Tis different.”
While his mild associate was speaking, the chief glanced, inquiringly,
from him to the caster, as if anxious to mark how the discrepancy would
be accounted for. As the chief stood, his advanced foot was on the
scuttle’s curb.
Bannadonna spoke:
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