own the endless straight
Lungara towards the banker's palace; but when he reached it he went on
to the Fornarina's house, and she was at the window waiting for him. For
her sake he refused to marry the great Cardinal Bibbiena's well-dowered
niece, Maria, and the world has not ceased to believe that for too much
love of the Fornarina he died. But before that, as Fabio Chigi tells,
Pope Leo the Tenth, being distressed by the painter's love sickness,
asked Agostino Chigi if there were not some way to bring him back to
work. And the great banker, as anxious for his Farnesina as the Pope was
for his Vatican, spirited away the lovely girl for a time, she
consenting for her lover's sake. And Chigi then pretended to search for
her, and comforted Raphael with news of her and promises of her return,
so that after being half mad with anxiety he grew calmer, and worked for
a time at his painting. But soon he languished, and the cure was worse
than the evil; so that one day Chigi brought the girl back to him
unawares and went away, leaving them together.

Of the end we know nothing, nor whether Margaret was with him when he
died; we know nothing, save that she outlived him, and died in her turn,
and lies in a grave which no one can find. But when all Rome was in
sorrow for the dead man, when he had been borne through the streets to
his grave, with his great unfinished Transfiguration for a funeral
banner, when he had been laid in his tomb in the Pantheon, beside Maria
Bibbiena, who had died, perhaps, because he would not love her, then
the pale Margaret must have sat often by the little Gothic window near
the Septimian gate, waiting for what could not come any more. For she
had loved a man beyond compare; and it had been her whole life.

[Illustration: MONASTERY OF SANT' ONOFRIO

From an old engraving]

If one comes from the Borgo by the Lungara, and if one turns up the
steep hill to the right, there is the place where Tasso died,
seventy-five years after Raphael was gone. The small monastery of Sant'
Onofrio, where he spent the last short month of his life, used to be a
lonely and beautiful place, and is remembered only for his sake, though
it has treasures of its own--the one fresco painted in Rome by Lionardo
da Vinci, and paintings by Domenichino and Pinturicchio in its portico
and little church, as well as memories of Saint Philip Neri, the
Roman-born patron saint of Rome. All these things barely sufficed to
restrain the go