Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/85

 over the water to see these caged gallows-birds, and stare at them blankly.

There are Italian children who look as though they had stepped down from a predella or a tryptich; they are like the singing children of Angelico, the light-bearing angels of Filippino, the pages of Vittorio Carpaccio, the winged boys of the Siennese masters. The old type is there still in all its purity; the oval face, the level brows, the curling hair, the spiritual eyes, the roselike, smiling, yet serious mouth which the painters of those happier times saw around them in the streets and in the fields.

There are so many Italian children still, looking on whom one thinks at once of dim rich altars, of gold-starred vaulted niches, of lunettes glowing in the dusk like jewels, of vaulted roofs that are borne up by the wings of sculptured angels.

This child, born from a mountain robber and named from the anointed penitent, was like one of these children who, in the works of the early masters, stand with chalice, or lyre, or dove of the Holy Spirit, about the feet of martyrs or around the throne of Mary. Only in the eyes of this creature, who was called a penitent ere she had sinned any sin,