Seven more days passed by. The tried Christian having solicited the favour of the Holy Oils, Cardinal Cintio arrived, bringing the blessing of the Sovereign Pontiff. The dying man displayed great joy at this:
"Here," said he, "is the crown which I came to Rome to seek; I hope to triumph to-morrow with its aid."
Virgil sent to beg Augustus to fling the Æneid into the fire; Tasso entreated Cintio to burn the Gerusalemme. Thereafter, he desired to be left alone with his crucifix.
The cardinal had not reached the door when his tears, till then violently restrained, burst forth: the bell was tolled, and the monks, chanting the prayers for the dead, wept and lamented in the cloisters. At this sound, Torquato said to the charitable recluses, whom he seemed to see wander around him like shadows:
"Friends, you think you are leaving me; I am only going before you."
Thenceforth, he held no converse except with his confessors and a few fathers great in doctrine. When he was on the point of breathing his last, they gathered this stanza from his lips, the fruit of his life's experience:
"If death were not, there would be nothing upon earth more miserable than man."
On the 25th of April 1595, about the middle of the day, the poet cried:
"In manus tuas, Domine....[189]"
The remainder of the verse was scarcely audible, as though it had been uttered by a departing traveller.