The Madonna of the Future

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What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to
determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present
inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little room
it was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded him
to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when we
began to walk in the open air I was able to appreciate his pitifully
weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to revive,
and murmured at last that he should like to go to the Pitti Gallery. I
shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls,
every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision,
to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyes
and lips of the great portraits appeared to smile in ineffable scorn of
the dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphant
authors; the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna of the Chair, as we
paused in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the sinister irony
of the women of Leonardo. Perfect silence, indeed, marked our whole
progress--the silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my pulses, as
Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after the other, that
he was looking his last. When we came out he was so exhausted that
instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a carriage and drove
him straight to his own poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary
lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes closed, as pale as
death, his faint breathing interrupted at intervals by a sudden gasp,
like a smothered sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of the
old woman who had admitted me before, and who emerged from a dark back
court, I contrived to lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him on
his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge, while I prepared in all
haste to seek a physician. But she followed me out of the room with a
pitiful clasping of her hands.

"Poor, dear, blessed gentleman," she murmured; "is he dying?"

"Possibly. How long has he been thus?"

"Since a certain night he passed ten days ago. I came up in the morning
to make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in his clothes before that
great canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he says his
prayers to it! He had not been to bed, nor since then, properly! What
has happened to him? Has he found out about the Serafina?" she
whispered, with a glittering eye and a toothless grin.

"Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful," I said, "and watch
him well till I come back." My return was delayed, through the absence
of the English physician, who was away on a round of visits, and whom I
vainly pursued from house to house before I overtook him. I brought him
to Theobald's bedside none too soon. A violent fever had seized our
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."

"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
raised them with her question, and revealed in their sombre stillness a
gleam of feminine confidence which, for the moment, revived and illumined
her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever name he had given his passion, it
was still her fine eyes that had charmed him.

"Be contented, madam," I answered, gravely.

She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then exhaling a full rich
sigh, as she gathered her shawl together--"He was a magnificent genius!"

I bowed, and we separated.

Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, I
perceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read before.
I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the superscription of a
card that I had carried for an hour in my waistcoat pocket. On the
threshold stood the ingenious artist whose claims to public favour were
thus distinctly signalised, smoking a pipe in the evening air, and giving
the finishing polish with a bit of rag to one of his inimitable
"combinations." I caught the expressive curl of a couple of tails. He
recognised me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious bow, and
motioned me to enter his studio. I returned his salute and passed on,
vexed with the apparition. For a week afterwards, whenever I was seized
among the ruins of triumphant Rome with some peculiarly poignant memory
of Theobald's transcendent illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed to
hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, "Cats and monkeys, monkeys and
cats; all human life there!"