Dearest Friend,—Our Beloved breathed his last as San Marco’s clock struck ten,—without pain—unconsciously.
I was able to make him happy a little before he became unconscious by a telegram from Smith saying, “Reviews in all this day’s papers most favorable, edition nearly exhausted.”
He just murmured, “How gratifying.”
Those were his last intelligible words.
Yours, Pen.
In that hour how could the son and the daughter who so loved him remember aught save the exquisite lines with which the poet had anticipated the reunion with his “Lyric Love”:
“Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!”
In the grand sala with its floor of black Italian marble and its lofty ceiling with exquisite fresco decoration, the simple and impressive service was held in Palazzo Rezzonico, and a fleet of gondolas, filled with friends and accompanied by the entire Venetian Syndic, bore the casket to its temporary resting-place in the chapel of San Michele, in the campo santo. The gondola that carried the casket had an angel, carved in wood, at the prow, and a lion at the stern. Dean Bradley, on behalf of Westminster Abbey, had telegraphed to Robert Barrett Browning, asking that the body of the poet might be laid within those honored walls; and as the cemetery in Florence wherein is Mrs. Browning’s tomb had long been closed, this honor from England was accepted. The same honor of a final resting-place in Westminster Abbey was also extended for the removal of the body of Mrs. Browning, but their son rightly felt that he must yield to the wishes of Florence that her tomb be undisturbed, and it is fitting that it should remain in the Italy she so loved.
