"Excuse me; I am sad and vexed and bitter." And with reprehensible
rudeness I marched away. I was excessively impatient to leave Florence;
my friend's dark spirit seemed diffused through all things. I had packed
my trunk to start for Rome that night, and meanwhile, to beguile my
unrest, I aimlessly paced the streets. Chance led me at last to the
church of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's phrase about Michael
Angelo--"He did his best at a venture"--I went in and turned my steps to
the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the sadness of its immortal
treasures, I fancied, while I stood there, that they needed no ampler
commentary than these simple words. As I passed through the church again
to leave it, a woman, turning away from one of the side altars, met me
face to face. The black shawl depending from her head draped
picturesquely the handsome visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped as
she recognised me, and I saw that she wished to speak. Her eye was
bright, and her ample bosom heaved in a way that seemed to portend a
certain sharpness of reproach. But the expression of my own face,
apparently, drew the sting from her resentment, and she addressed me in a
tone in which bitterness was tempered by a sort of dogged resignation. "I
know it was you, now, that separated us," she said. "It was a pity he
ever brought you to see me! Of course, you couldn't think of me as he
did. Well, the Lord gave him, the Lord has taken him. I have just paid
for a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you this, signore--I
never deceived him. Who put it into his head that I was made to live on
holy thoughts and fine phrases? It was his own fancy, and it pleased him
to think so.--Did he suffer much?" she added more softly, after a pause.

"His sufferings were great, but they were short."

"And did he speak of me?" She had hesitated and dropped her eyes; she