At first he had been accustomed to foregather in the evening with the painters, writers and such like who met in the little tavern near the piazza, but presently he withdrew himself, for his absorption in his studies became more pressing.
He had been accustomed to bathe in that bland sea and to take long walks among the pleasant vineyards, but little by little, grudging the time, he ceased to do so.
He worked harder than he had ever worked in Detroit.
He would start at noon and work all through the night till the whistle of the steamer that goes every morning from Capri to Naples told him that it was five o’clock and time to go to bed.
His subject opened out before him, vaster and more significant, and he imagined a work that would put him for ever beside the great historians of the past.
As the years went by he was to be found seldom in the haunts of men.
He could be tempted to come out of his house only by a game of chess or the chance of an argument.
He loved to set his brain against another’s.
He was widely read now, not only in history, but in philosophy and science; and he was a skilful controversialist, quick, logical and incisive.
But he had good-humour and kindliness; though he took a very human pleasure in victory, he did not exult in it to your mortification.
When first he came to the island he was a big, brawny fellow, with thick black hair and a black beard, of a powerful physique; but gradually his skin became pale and waxy; he grew thin and frail.
It was an odd contradiction in the most logical of men that, though a convinced and impetuous materialist, he despised the body; he looked upon it as a vile instrument which he could force to do the spirit’s bidding.
Neither illness nor lassitude prevented him from going on with his work.
For fourteen years he toiled unremittingly.
He made thousands and thousands of notes.
He sorted and classified them.
He had his subject at his finger ends, and at last was ready to begin.
He sat down to write.
He died.
The body that he, the materialist, had treated so contumeliously took its revenge on him.
That vast accumulation of knowledge is lost for ever.
Vain was that ambition, surely not an ignoble one, to set his name beside those of Gibbon and Mommsen.
His memory is treasured in the hearts of a few friends, fewer, alas! as the years pass on, and to the world he is unknown in death as he was in life.
And yet to me his life was a success.
The pattern is good and complete.
He did what he wanted, and he died when his goal was in sight and never knew the bitterness of an end achieved.