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The day previous to the one fixed for the exhibition arrived, the day upon which the three judges made their rounds, and awarded permission for the statues approved to enter the palace on the morrow.

Many a heart in Florence grew sick with alternations of hope and fear. Many an artist's soul was filled with despair as he recognized the vast distance that existed between his actual execution and the sublime heights reached by his ideal conception. Many others, gifted with the gigantic self-esteem which is often the blemish of genius, exulted in the certainty of their triumph, and, unrebuked by a doubt of their surpassing merits, impatiently awaited the coming of the judges.

In one studio sat a youth who had seen the roses of but twenty-two summers bloom and wither. Though the dawn had scarcely broken, he was dressed with scrupulous care, and his picturesque attire, of black velvet, displayed to advantage his lithely moulded form, and imparted a striking transparency to his colorless complexion. His hollow cheeks bespoke vigils of study and labor; his dark, deeply sunken eyes, full of restless fire, betrayed a fervid and highly sensitive organization, a temperament at once imaginative and volcanic. His hair of purple blackness, wandered in untaught curls from beneath a velvet cap, shading his expansive brow, and eloquent, though too sharply cut, features.