A sylvan creature, native among the woods, had loved a mortal maiden, and--perhaps by kindness, and the subtile courtesies which love might teach to his simplicity, or possibly by a ruder wooing--had won her to his haunts.

In due time he gained her womanly affection; and, making their bridal bower, for aught we know, in the hollow of a great tree, the pair spent a happy wedded life in that ancient neighborhood where now stood Donatello's tower.
From this union sprang a vigorous progeny that took its place unquestioned among human families.

In that age, however, and long afterwards, it showed the ineffaceable lineaments of its wild paternity: it was a pleasant and kindly race of men, but capable of savage fierceness, and never quite restrainable within the trammels of social law.

They were strong, active, genial, cheerful as the sunshine, passionate as the tornado.

Their lives were rendered blissful by art unsought harmony with nature.
But, as centuries passed away, the Faun's wild blood had necessarily been attempered with constant intermixtures from the more ordinary streams of human life.