human
We were to go back to the mountains together, to tell him that his picture would hang in the Luxembourg, and then in the Louvre--that in all probability he would be decorated by the French government, that other pictures of his would live for all time in Paris, in London, in Brussels--a letter came from the woman, his niece. He was dead.
gpt
Heavens and earth, Vieyra, what beastly, ghastly, brutally tragic horror are you telling us, anyhow?
human
I should not have told you. I knew you could not understand.
gpt
Do you mean--is it possible that _you_ mean that if we had seen him--had seen that look--we would--that he had had all that an artist--
human
I went back to the funeral, to the mountains. The niece told me that before he died he smiled suddenly on them all and said: 'I have had a happy life,' I had taken a palm to lay on his coffin, and after I had looked long at his dead face, I put aside the palm. I felt that if he had lived I could never have spoken to him---could never have told him.
gpt
What had I to offer him?