I am sure I am not mistaken when I say that there is a profound sadness, too, running through all that he ever did. His works are large, Gargantuan, and profoundly melancholy; witness the Moses that I have been talking of, to say nothing of the statues on the tombs of the Medici in San Lorenzo at Florence. I saw them in Berlin, reproduced there in plaster in the Kaiser-Friederich-Museum, and once more I was filled with the same sense of profound, meditative melancholy. It is present in its most significant form here in Florence, in San Lorenzo, the façade of which he once prepared to make magnificent, but here he was again frustrated. I saw the originals of these deep, sad figures that impressed me as no other sculptural figures ever have done. “Dawn and Dusk”; “Day and Night.” How they dwell with me constantly. I was never able to look at any of his later work--the Sistine Chapel frescoes, the figures of slaves in the Louvre, the Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, or these figures here in Florence, without thinking how true it was that this great will had rarely had its way and how, throughout all his days, his energy was so unfortunately compelled to war with circumstance. Life plays this trick on the truly great if they are not ruthless and of material and executive leanings. Art is a pale flower that blooms only in sheltered places and to drag it forth and force it to contend with the rough usages of the world is to destroy its perfectness. It was so in this man’s case who at times, because of unlucky conjunctions, was compelled to fly for his life, or to sue for the means which life should have been honored to bestow upon him, or else to abandon great purposes. Out of such a mist of sorrow, and only so, however, have come these figures that now dream here year after year in their gray chapel, while travelers come and go, draining their cup of wonder,--rising ever and anon to the level of the beauty they contemplate. I can see Browning speculating upon the spirit of these figures. “Night” with her heavy lids, lost in great weariness; and “Day” with his clear eyes. I can see Rodin gathering substance for his “Thinker,” and Shelley marveling at the suggestions which arise from these mighty figures. There is none so great as this man who, in his medieval gloom and mysticism, inherited the art of Greece. CHAPTER XXXVIII A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE