"I may have need of them all, dear master."
"So much the better! I am yours body and soul, Ascanio. I have a confession to make to you, too: yes, a confession, for although I have committed no sin, I think, still I shall have some remorse until I am absolved by you. But do you speak first."
"Very well, master.—But, great Heaven! what is that cast?" cried Ascanio, interrupting himself.
His eye had just fallen upon the statue of Hebe, and in the statue he recognized Colombe.
"It is Hebe," replied Benvenuto, with glistening eyes; "it is the goddess of youth. Do you think it beautiful, Ascanio?"
"Oh, wonderful! But those features: I know them, I cannot be mistaken!"
"Rash boy! Since you raise the veil half-way, I must needs snatch it away altogether, and so, after all, your confidence will come after mine. Sit down, Ascanio; you shall have my heart spread out before you like an open book. You need me, you say: I, too, need that you should hear me. I shall be relieved of a great weight when you know all."
Ascanio sat down, paler than the culprit about to listen to the reading of the death sentence.
"You are a Florentine, Ascanio, and I do not need to ask you if you know the story of Dante Alighieri. One day he saw a child named Beatrice passing along the street, and he loved her. The child died and he loved her still, for it was her soul that he loved and souls do not die; but he crowned her with a crown of stars, and placed her in paradise. That done, he set about analyzing human passions, sounding the depths of poetry and philosophy; and when, purified by suffering and contemplation, be readied the gates of heaven, where Virgil, that is, Wisdom, was to leave him, he was not obliged to stop for lack of a guide, because he found Beatrice, that is, Love, awaiting him on the threshold.
"Ascanio, I have my Beatrice, dead like the other, and adored as she was. This has been hitherto a secret between God and her and myself. I am weak to resist temptation; but my adoration for her has remained intact amid all the impure passions to which I have yielded. I had placed my light too high for corruption to reach it. The man plunged heedlessly into dissipation, the artist remained true to his mysterious betrothal; and if I have done anything creditable, Ascanio,—if inert matter, silver or clay, has been made to assume form and life under my fingers, if I have sometimes succeeded in imparting beauty to marble and life to bronze,—it has been because my resplendent vision has given me counsel, support, and instruction for twenty years past.