Sarti came back, he always
found that the Blessed Mother had taken good care of Caterina.

That was briefly the history of Sarti, who fulfilled so well the orders
Lady Cheverel gave him, that she sent him away again with a stock of new
work. But this time, week after week passed, and he neither reappeared
nor sent home the music intrusted to him. Lady Cheverel began to be
anxious, and was thinking of sending Warren to inquire at the address
Sarti had given her, when one day, as she was equipped for driving out,
the valet brought in a small piece of paper, which, he said, had been
left for her ladyship by a man who was carrying fruit. The paper
contained only three tremulous lines, in Italian:--'Will the
Eccelentissima, for the love of God, have pity on a dying man, and come
to him?'

Lady Cheverel recognized the handwriting as Sarti's in spite of its
tremulousness, and, going down to her carriage, ordered the Milanese
coachman to drive to Strada Quinquagesima, Numero 10. The coach stopped
in a dirty narrow street opposite La Pazzini's fruit-shop, and that large
specimen of womanhood immediately presented herself at the door, to the
extreme disgust of Mrs. Sharp, who remarked privately to Mr. Warren that
La Pazzini was a 'hijeous porpis'. The fruit-woman, however, was all
smiles and deep curtsies to the Eccelentissima, who, not very well
understanding her Milanese dialect, abbreviated the conversation by
asking to be shown at once to Signor Sarti. La Pazzini preceded her up
the dark narrow stairs, and opened a door through which she begged her
ladyship to enter. Directly opposite the door lay Sarti, on a low
miserable bed. His eyes were glazed, and no movement indicated that he
was conscious of their entrance.

On the foot of the bed was seated a tiny child, apparently not three
years old, her head covered by a linen cap, her feet clothed with leather
boots, above which her little yellow legs showed thin and naked. A frock,
made of what had once been a gay flowered silk, was her only other
garment. Her large dark eyes shone from out her queer little face, like
two precious stones in a grotesque image carved in old ivory. She held an
empty medicine-bottle in her hand, and was amusing herself with putting
the cork in and drawing it out again, to hear how it would pop.

La Pazzini went up to the bed and said, 'Ecco la nobilissima donna;' but
directly after screamed out, 'Holy mother! he is dead!'

It was so. The entre