id Imperia, "you are not wounded so deeply as you fancy.
No, do not drive in, Giovanni, I have learned all I wished to know. In
spite of her present despair Maria will enter those gates ere long a
happy bride; but I shall never knock at them again. The end would have
come soon in any event, for Agostino had ceased to love me, but he shall
never boast that he cast me out."

I took her to her own house, and when Chigi learned that she had not
returned with me he but shrugged his shoulders, for she had rightly
divined his heart. I never saw her again, but I heard much, for Rome
still rings with wild tales of her notoriously evil life. A nature hers
that had much of good in it I bear witness, though sadly she mistook her
way. She mistook it even when she tried to do a kindness to Margherita.
Shame and heart-break was the guerdon which that poor child received in
return for her great devotion.

As for me, the glimpse I had caught of Maria's death-struck face so
rankled in my soul through the long watches of that sleepless night that
on the morrow, in anguished contrition, I confessed all that miserable
story to Raphael.

When he knew how cruelly he had misjudged her he was smitten with such
remorse that he could never forgive himself or take joy in life. For
though he went to her at once and she forgave him freely, nay, strove to
comfort him by protesting there was naught to forgive, she had suffered
overmuch to endure the great joy of their reconciliation. Prattling of
love and happiness and smiling still when she no longer had strength
to utter his name, she peacefully died within his arms.

[Illustration: Pope Leo X. at Raphael's Bier

From the painting by Pietro Michis. Permission of Franz Hanfstaengl]

It was Raphael's grief rather than, as reported, a fever taken in
superintending archaeological excavations which truly caused his death on
his thirty-seventh birthday, upon that Good Friday which neither you nor
I, my Giulio, can ever forget.

Margherita told me that in his delirium he knew her not, but kissed her
hands, calling her "Maria" and begging her forgiveness. To the poor girl
he left by will ample support; but, by the same testament, he was buried
by the side of Maria Dovizio, beneath whose name he caused to be
chiselled the inscription, "The affianced wife of Raphael Santi, whom
death deprived of a happy marriage."

CHAPTER III

A CELLINI CASKET

INTERLUDE

The trellis that once shut th