Be the cause what it might, Donatello's eyes shone with a serene and hopeful expression while looking upward at the bronze pope, to whose widely diffused blessing, it may be, he attributed all this good influence.
"Yes, my dear friend," said he, in reply to the sculptor's remark, "I feel the blessing upon my spirit." "It is wonderful," said Kenyon, with a smile, "wonderful and delightful to think how long a good man's beneficence may be potent, even after his death.

How great, then, must have been the efficacy of this excellent pontiff's blessing while he was alive!" "I have heard," remarked the Count, "that there was a brazen image set up in the wilderness, the sight of which healed the Israelites of their poisonous and rankling wounds.

If it be the Blessed Virgin's pleasure, why should not this holy image before us do me equal good?
A wound has long been rankling in my soul, and filling it with poison." "I did wrong to smile," answered Kenyon.

"It is not for me to limit Providence in its operations on man's spirit." While they stood talking, the clock in the neighboring cathedral told the hour, with twelve reverberating strokes, which it flung down upon the crowded market place, as if warning one and all to take advantage of the bronze pontiff's benediction, or of Heaven's blessing, however proffered, before the opportunity were lost.
"High noon," said the sculptor.

"It is Miriam's hour!".