The Madonna of the Future

“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!”