So I found Raphael and so I left him, successful and apparently happy. Had I comprehended what the incident which I have just related meant to him,--had I even suspected his misconception of the situation,--I might have made him understand that neither at Cetinale nor at Porto d'Anzio had Maria Dovizio sung the _Hymn to Apollo_, that in both places it was Imperia who had chanted, Imperia who had responded to Chigi's caresses, and so this woful misunderstanding might never have divided these young lovers. Maria, far from being Chigi's guest at the moment of the discovery of the _Apollo_, was in Urbino, awaiting in ever-increasing wonder and dismay some word of affection from her betrothed. Failing to receive it she came to Rome, but Raphael held himself aloof, pleading the Pope's demands upon his time. He thought that she would understand the cause of his neglect, and herself sunder the engagement, for he would not shame her by any accusation.
One ineffaceable picture of my friend I carried with me into my exile, for going to the Vatican to bid Raphael farewell, I was told that he was in the Pope's villa of the Belvedere superintending the placing of the _Apollo_, which had just arrived. The guards barred my entrance to the loggia, and indeed I cared not to intrude, for I saw that the Pope was there, gazing at the statue with a grim delight, as though he believed that the god had descended to earth to expel as of old the barbarian Gauls.
Raphael stood entranced, unmindful of the presence of Maria Dovizio, who sat a little apart, heart-sick and bewildered, unable to grope her way through the thick fog of misconception which had drifted between herself and her beloved.
And over all the white form of _Apollo_ gleamed in heartless gladness, untouched by any feeling for his votary's sins of ignorance for which he would cry in vain repentance, "Had I but known, had I but known!"
It was impossible for me to tarry longer in Rome without employment, and I bethought me of the monks of Oliveto, and how they had asked for a series of paintings for their cloister. To this refuge, therefore, I repaired, completing, in two years, thirty-one great frescoes for little more than my sustenance. Yea; and for my belly's sake I might have accepted the life of a cowled monk, had not Chigi in the nick of time drawn me from that slough with the announcement that Peruzzi had completed the building of his villa, and that it was now ready for decoration.