If it had but a nose!
They ought to sift every handful of earth that has been thrown out of the
excavation, for the nose and the missing hand and fingers must needs be
there; and, if they were found, the effect would be like the reappearance
of a divinity upon earth. Mutilated as we saw her, it was strangely
interesting to be present at the moment, as it were, when she had just
risen from her long burial, and was shedding the unquenchable lustre
around her which no eye had seen for twenty or more centuries. The earth
still clung about her; her beautiful lips were full of it, till Mr. Story
took a thin chip of wood and cleared it away from between them.
The proprietor of the vineyard stood by; a man with the most purple face
and hugest and reddest nose that I ever beheld in my life. It must have
taken innumerable hogsheads of his thin vintage to empurple his face in
this manner. He chuckled much over the statue, and, I suppose, counts
upon making his fortune by it. He is now awaiting a bid from the Papal
government, which, I believe, has the right of pre-emption whenever any
relics of ancient art are discovered.
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