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.
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