[The Marble Faun<br> Volume II. by Nathaniel Hawthorne]@TWC D-Link book
The Marble Faun
Volume II.

CHAPTER XXX
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"Let it remain so!" By some accidental handling of the clay, entirely independent of his own will, Kenyon had given the countenance a distorted and violent look, combining animal fierceness with intelligent hatred.

Had Hilda, or had Miriam, seen the bust, with the expression which it had now assumed, they might have recognized Donatello's face as they beheld it at that terrible moment when he held his victim over the edge of the precipice.
"What have I done ?" said the sculptor, shocked at his own casual production.

"It were a sin to let the clay which bears your features harden into a look like that.

Cain never wore an uglier one." "For that very reason, let it remain!" answered the Count, who had grown pale as ashes at the aspect of his crime, thus strangely presented to him in another of the many guises under which guilt stares the criminal in the face.

"Do not alter it! Chisel it, rather, in eternal marble! I will set it up in my oratory and keep it continually before my eyes.
Sadder and more horrible is a face like this, alive with my own crime, than the dead skull which my forefathers handed down to me!" But, without in the least heeding Donatello's remonstrances, the sculptor again applied his artful fingers to the clay, and compelled the bust to dismiss the expression that had so startled them both.
"Believe me," said he, turning his eyes upon his friend, full of grave and tender sympathy, "you know not what is requisite for your spiritual growth, seeking, as you do, to keep your soul perpetually in the unwholesome region of remorse.


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