Dragon's Teeth by Eça de Queirós

AFTER Luiza's funeral Jorge dismissed the servants, and went himself to stay with Sebastião. At about nine o'clock in the evening of the same day the Counsellor Accacio was walking disconsolately by the Moinho de Vento, when he encountered Julião, who had just come from visiting a patient in the Rua da Rosa. They walked on together, conversing about Luiza, the funeral, and Jorge's grief.

"Poor fellow! It is a terrible blow to him," said Julião, compassionately.

"She was a model wife! " murmured the counsellor.

He had just come, he said, from Sebastião's, but he had not been able to see his dear Jorge, who had thrown himself upon the bed and fallen into a profound sleep. And he added, --

"I have been lately reading that intense suffering is apt to be followed by profound sleep. Thus it was with Napoleon, for instance, after Waterloo, -- the great disaster of Waterloo. " And after a moment's silence he continued, --

"The truth is, I went to see Sebastião; I wanted to show him -- "

And he interrupted himself to say, dwelling on every word, --

"For I thought it my duty to pay a tribute to the memory of the unhappy lady. It was my duty, -- a duty from which nothing could absolve me. And I rejoice to have met you, for I desire to know your conscientious and dispassionate opinion of it."

Julião coughed, and asked, --

"Is it an obituary?"

"It is an obituary."

And the counsellor, although he did not consider it altogether proper, on account of his exalted position, to enter a public coffee-house, intimated to Julião that they might rest a little at Tavares' if there were not many people there, and he would read him his production.

They entered the café. They found no one there, except two old men seated at a table drinking coffee, with their hats on, and leaning on their bamboo canes. The waiter was dozing at the other end of the room. A glaring and intense light filled the narrow apartment.

"There is a propitious silence here," said the counsellor.

He invited Julião to take some coffee, and drawing from his pocket a sheet of ruled paper, murmured, "Unfortunate lady! " He then bowed to Julião and began: --

OBITUARY.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE SENHORA DONNA LUIZA MENDONÇA DE BRITO CARVALHO.

"Rosa d'amor, rosa purpurea e bella, Quem entre os goivos te esfolhon da campa."

"Those are the words of the immortal Garrett. " And he continued, in slow and lugubrious accents:

"An angel has ascended to heaven, -- a flower that bloomed on earth till the storm-wind of death swept her with relentless fury to the tomb."