Sometimes, however, Sarti left his little one with another kind of protectress.  He was very regular in his devotions, which he paid thrice a-week in the great cathedral, carrying Caterina with him.  Here, when the high morning sun was warming the myriad glittering pinnacles without, and struggling against the massive gloom within, the shadow of a man with a child on his arm might be seen flitting across the more stationary shadows of pillar and mullion, and making its way towards a little tinsel Madonna hanging in a retired spot near the choir.  Amid all the sublimities of the mighty cathedral, poor Sarti had fixed on this tinsel Madonna as the symbol of divine mercy and protection,—­just as a child, in the presence of a great landscape, sees none of the glories of wood and sky, but sets its heart on a floating feather or insect that happens to be on a level with its eye.  Here, then, Sarti worshipped and prayed, setting Caterina on the floor by his side; and now and then, when the cathedral lay near some place where he had to call, and did not like to take her, he would leave her there in front of the tinsel Madonna, where she would sit, perfectly good, amusing herself with low crowing noises and see-sawings of her tiny body.  And when 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.