The air was quietly full of the noise of falling water, the cause of which was nowhere visible, though apparently near at hand.  This pleasant, natural sound, not unlike that of a distant cascade in the forest, may be heard in many of the Roman streets and piazzas, when the tumult of the city is hushed; for consuls, emperors, and popes, the great men of every age, have found no better way of immortalizing their memories than by the shifting, indestructible, ever new, yet unchanging, upgush and downfall of water.  They have written their names in that unstable element, and proved it a more durable record than brass or marble.

“Donatello, you had better take one of those gay, boyish artists for your companion,” said Miriam, when she found the Italian youth at her side.  “I am not now in a merry mood, as when we set all the world a-dancing the other afternoon, in the Borghese grounds.”

“I never wish to dance any more,” answered Donatello.

“What a melancholy was in that tone!” exclaimed Miriam.  “You are getting spoilt in this dreary Rome, and will be as wise and as wretched as all the rest of mankind, unless you go back soon to your Tuscan vineyards.  Well; give me your arm, then!  But take care that no friskiness comes over you.  We must walk evenly and heavily to-night!”

The party arranged itself according to its natural affinities or casual likings; a sculptor generally choosing a painter, and a painter a sculp—­tor, for his companion, in preference to brethren of their own art.  Kenyon would gladly have taken Hilda to himself, and have drawn her a little aside from the throng of merry wayfarers.  But she kept near Miriam, and seemed, in her gentle and quiet way, to decline a separate alliance either with him or any other of her acquaintances.

So they set forth, and had gone but a little way, when the narrow street emerged into a piazza, on one side of which, glistening and dimpling in the moonlight, was the most famous fountain in Rome.  Its murmur—­not to say its uproar—­had been in the ears of the company, ever since they came into the open air.  It was the Fountain of Trevi, which draws its precious water from a source far beyond the walls, whence it flows hitherward through old subterranean aqueducts, and sparkles forth as pure as the virgin who first led Agrippa to its well-spring, by her father’s door.

“I shall sip as much of this water as the hollow of my hand will hold,” said Miriam.

“I am leaving Rome in a few days; and the tradition goes, that a parting draught at the Fountain of Trevi insures the traveller’s return, whatever obstacles and improbabilities may seem to beset him.  Will you drink, Donatello?”

“Signorina, what you drink, I drink,” said the youth.

They and the rest of the party descended some steps to the water’s brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gazing at the absurd design of the fountain, where some sculptor of Bernini’s school had gone absolutely mad in marble.  It was a great palace front, with niches and many bas-reliefs, out of which looked Agrippa’s legendary virgin, and several of the allegoric sisterhood; while, at the base, appeared Neptune, with his floundering steeds, and Tritons blowing their horns about him, and twenty other artificial fantasies, which the calm moonlight soothed into better taste than was native to them.