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!"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE***

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