decided in favor of the painter; Salvator
coolly resumed his pencil, and the medical _cognoscente_ permitted the
idea of the picture to die away, _sul proprio letto_.

DEATH OF SALVATOR ROSA.

Salvator Rosa, in his last illness, demanded of the priests and others
that surrounded him, what they required of him. They replied, "in the
first instance to receive the sacrament as it is administered in Rome to
the dying." "To receive the sacrament," says his confessor, Baldovini,
"he showed no repugnance, but he vehemently and positively refused to
allow the host, with all the solemn pomp of its procession, to be
brought to his house, which he deemed unworthy of the divine presence."
He objected to the ostentation of the ceremony, to its _eclat_, to the
noise and bustle, smoke and heat it would create in the close sick
chamber. He appears to have objected to more than it was discreet to
object to in Rome: and all that his family and his confessor could
extort from him on the subject was, that he would permit himself to be
carried from his bed to the parish church, and there, with the humility
of a contrite heart, would consent to receive the sacrament at the foot
of the altar.

As immediate death might have been the consequence of this act of
indiscretion, his family, who were scarcely less interested for a life
so precious, than for the soul which was the object of their pious
apprehensions, gave up the point altogether; and on account of the
vehemence with which Salvator spoke on the subject, and the agitation it
had occasioned, they carefully avoided renewing a proposition which had
rallied all his force of character and volition to their long abandoned
post.

The rejection of a ceremony which was deemed in Rome indispensably
necessary to salvation, by one who was already stamped with the church's
reprobation, soon spread; report exaggerated the circumstance into a
positive expression of infidelity; and the gossip of the Roman
ante-rooms was supplied for the time with a subject of discussion, in
perfect harmony with their love for slander, bigotry, and idleness.

"As I went forth from Salvator's door," relates the worthy Baldovini, "I
met the _Canonico Scornio_, a man who has taken out a license to speak
of all men as he pleases. 'And how goes it with Salvator?' demands this
Canonico of me. 'Bad enough, I fear.'--Well, a few nights back,
happening to be in the anteroom of a certain great prelate, I found
myself in