But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot.

As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity.

The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those long breaths which he drew.
The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead atmosphere in which he had wasted so many months, the hard pavements, the smell of ruin and decaying generations, the chill palaces, the convent bells, the heavy incense of altars, the life that he had led in those dark, narrow streets, among priests, soldiers, nobles, artists, and women,--all the sense of these things rose from the young man's consciousness like a cloud which had darkened over him without his knowing how densely.
He drank in the natural influences of the scene, and was intoxicated as by an exhilarating wine.

He ran races with himself along the gleam and shadow of the wood-paths.

He leapt up to catch the overhanging bough of an ilex, and swinging himself by it alighted far onward, as if he had flown thither through the air.