human
So you think you would like to write, Bambina? Don't. Take fatherly advice. A woman's sole duty in life is to charm and do nothing. Only old scoundrels like myself should work. Behold the result.
gpt
You were badly brought up,
human
How would you have tackled the job?
gpt
Taking you down would have suited me much better.
human
Of course. It is only from babes like you that age learns now-a-days. How is it that you are the one of your family I meet last? He hesitated.
gpt
No--not last,--for I seem always to have remembered you. Long ago you closed a door and left me in darkness. Now you open it again and smile. You should never do anything but smile,--and yet you have--oh, I don't know what! You take me back to Rome--back and back through lives and lives--if such were true.
human
Such things are true, surely. From the time I was able to think at all, I remembered many events from former lives. I have no recollection of knowing you, however.
gpt
But you believe that you lived before? I'll tell you what I have never mentioned to any one. From an agnostic it would not ring true. If I have written anything which will live it is 'Imperial Purple.' The reason is simple. If there is anything in your theory at all, I lived in Rome. I was an eye-witness of the killing of Cæsar. The story of it ran off my pen. Text books were needless. I wrote as I remembered, and truth penetrates. Later I tried to write of Greece, and failed. It was mechanical. There was no subconscious memory to help me. A pretty theory,--that is all. When a bee dies it ceases to hum.