"I am not a boy now.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind." The sculptor could not but smile at the triteness of the remark, which, nevertheless, had a kind of originality as coming from Donatello.

He had thought it out from his own experience, and perhaps considered himself as communicating a new truth to mankind.
They were now advancing up the courtyard; and the long extent of the villa, with its iron-barred lower windows and balconied upper ones, became visible, stretching back towards a grove of trees.
"At some period of your family history," observed Kenyon, "the Counts of Monte Beni must have led a patriarchal life in this vast house.

A great-grandsire and all his descendants might find ample verge here, and with space, too, for each separate brood of little ones to play within its own precincts.

Is your present household a large one ?" "Only myself," answered Donatello, "and Tomaso, who has been butler since my grandfather's time, and old Stella, who goes sweeping and dusting about the chambers, and Girolamo, the cook, who has but an idle life of it.