patient, and the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours later I
knew that he had brain fever. From this moment I was with him
constantly; but I am far from wishing to describe his illness.
Excessively painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned out in
delirium. One night in particular that I passed at his pillow, listening
to his wild snatches of regret, of aspiration, of rapture and awe at the
phantasmal pictures with which his brain seemed to swarm, comes back to
my memory now like some stray page from a lost masterpiece of tragedy.
Before a week was over we had buried him in the little Protestant
cemetery on the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I had caused
to be informed of his illness, had come in person, I was told, to inquire
about its progress; but she was absent from his funeral, which was
attended by but a scanty concourse of mourners. Half a dozen old
Florentine sojourners, in spite of the prolonged estrangement which had
preceded his death, had felt the kindly impulse to honour his grave.
Among them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I found, on my departure,
waiting in her carriage at the gate of the cemetery.

"Well," she said, relieving at last with a significant smile the
solemnity of our immediate greeting, "and the great Madonna? Have you
seen her, after all?"

"I have seen her," I said; "she is mine--by bequest. But I shall never
show her to you."

"And why not, pray?"

"My dear Mrs. Coventry, you would not understand her!"

"Upon my word, you are polite."