Titian was sent for.

He came, completed the pictures, signed them with the dead man's name,
and gave them to the world.

"And," says the veracious Vasari, "they were done just as well, if not
better than Giorgione himself could have done them, had he been alive!"

It was absurd of Giorgione to die of a broken heart and let Titian come
in, making free with everything in his studio, and complete his work. It
was very absurd.

Time is the great avenger--let us wait. Morta del Feltri, the perfidious
friend, grew tired of his mistress: their love was so warm it shortly
burned itself to ashes--ashes of roses.

Morta deserted the girl, fled from Venice, joined the army, and a javelin
plunged through his liver at the battle of Zara ended his career.

The unhappy young woman, twice a widow, fought off hungry wolves by
finding work in a glass-factory, making mosaics at fourteen cents a day.
When she was seventy, Titian, aged seventy-five, painted her picture as a
beggar-woman.

* * * * *

The quality of sentiment that clings about the life of Giorgione seems to
forbid a cool, critical view of his work. Byron indited a fine poem to
him; and poetic criticism seems for him the proper kind. The glamour of