Under Two Flags
I've been reading "Under Two Flags" for over a month now. It's one of those books I'm not too enthralled with -- but I've invested so much time in it I need to finish it. I had to smile, however, at the description of the death of a French foreign legion officer, formerly an artist, in Algiers:
"She had killed me; she had struck my genius dead; she had made earth my hell--what of that? She had her beauty eternal in the picture she needed, and the whole city rang with her loveliness as they looked on my work. I have never painted again. I came here. What of that? An artist the less then, the world did not care; a life the less soon, she will not care either!"
Then, as the words ended, a great wave of blood beat back his breath and burst from the pent-up torture of his striving lungs, and stained red the dark and silken masses of his beard. His comrade had seen the haemorrhage many times, yet now he knew, as he had never known before, that this was death.
...
"It is over now, so best! If only I could have seen France once more. France-----"
He stretched his arms outward as he spoke with the vain longing of a hopeless love. Then a deep sigh quivered through his lips, his hand strove to close on the hand of his comrade, and his head fell, resting on the flushed rosebuds of Provence.
He was dead.
"She had killed me; she had struck my genius dead; she had made earth my hell--what of that? She had her beauty eternal in the picture she needed, and the whole city rang with her loveliness as they looked on my work. I have never painted again. I came here. What of that? An artist the less then, the world did not care; a life the less soon, she will not care either!"
Then, as the words ended, a great wave of blood beat back his breath and burst from the pent-up torture of his striving lungs, and stained red the dark and silken masses of his beard. His comrade had seen the haemorrhage many times, yet now he knew, as he had never known before, that this was death.
...
"It is over now, so best! If only I could have seen France once more. France-----"
He stretched his arms outward as he spoke with the vain longing of a hopeless love. Then a deep sigh quivered through his lips, his hand strove to close on the hand of his comrade, and his head fell, resting on the flushed rosebuds of Provence.
He was dead.
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