ove, and I call dogs, or French, which comes to the same, the
frozen philosophisers who are moved only by the fact that two and two
make four."

Alfieri's secret desire that he might not survive his beloved was
fulfilled sooner, perhaps, than he expected. The eccentric figure, the
tall, gaunt man, thin and pale as a ghost, with flying red hair and
flying scarlet cloak, driving the well-known phaeton, or sauntering
moodily along the Lung Arno and through the Boboli gardens, was soon to
be seen no more. As the year 1803 wore on he felt himself hard pressed
by the gout; he ate less and less, he took an enormous amount of
foot exercise; he worked madly at his memoirs, his comedies, his
translations, he felt almost constantly fatigued and depressed. On the
3rd October 1803, after his usual morning's work, he went out for a
drive in his phaeton; but a strange and excessive cold, despite the
still summer weather, forced him to alight and to try and warm himself
by walking. Walking brought on violent internal pains, and he returned
home with the fever on him. The next day he rose and dressed, but he was
unable to eat or work, and fell into a long drowse; the next day after
that he again tried to take a walk, but returned with frightful pains.
He refused to go to bed except at night, and tore off the mustard
plaisters which the doctors had placed on his feet, lest the blisters
should prevent his walking; dying, he would still not be a sick man. The
night of the 8th he was unable to sleep, and talked a great deal to the
Countess, seated by his bedside, about his work, and repeated part of
Hesiod in Greek to her. Accustomed for months to the idea of death, he
does not seem to have guessed that it was near at hand. But the news
that he was dying spread through Florence. A Piedmontese lady--strangely
enough a niece of that Marchesa de Prie opposite to whose windows
Alfieri had renewed the device of Ulysses and the sirens by being tied
to a chair--hastened to a learned and eccentric priest, a Padre Canovai,
entreating him to run and offer the dying poet the consolations of
religion. Canovai, knowing that both Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany were
unbelievers, stoutly refused; but later on, seized with remorse, he
hurried to the house on the Lung Arno. Admitted into the sick room, he
came just in time to see Alfieri, who had got up during a momentary
absence of Mme. d'Albany, rise from his arm-chair, lean against his
bed, and, without agony