"Dying?" put in Mrs. Vanderhoff. "How extravagantly you talk, my son."
"Well, crazy, then."
She laughed hopelessly.
"Go on, pray," she said to her brother. "He simply leaps from the frying-pan into the fire."
"De Camoens," he said, "was by no means without faults, but he was gifted, generous, forgiving, and brave. He was foolish enough to love a lady too near the throne, and on that account was banished, and endured many hardships for years. Yet he did not let this dampen his love of country, and his loyalty to the government. Though an exile, he wrote a romantic epic extolling the deeds of his countrymen in all ages, which has become a great classic, and has made both them and himself immortal. I call that a generous deed! He died poor and unnoticed, but now his people make an idol of him, and his statue is one of the sights of Lisbon."
"Did he live here?" asked Faith. "That is, when he was not in exile?"
"Yes, this was his home."
"And his poem was the Lusiad," added Mrs. Vanderhoff.
"Why, I've heard of that!" cried Dwight. "We had something about it in our Rhetoric."
"And here," said Mr. Lawrence, pointing down a street into which they had turned, "you catch your first glimpse of his statue. Poor fellow! I wonder if he knows of the tardy recognition, wherever he is now?"