The End of the Journey

After twelve years in Paris, de Queiroz wanted to move again. His wish was to go to Brazil, where his grandfather had been a judge during the Napoleonic wars, when Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Portugal, and the homeland abandoned to the plundering French and Spaniards. Death came too soon for him to achieve it.

His health, never flourishing, worsened, and despite desperate travels to Southern France and Switzerland, he died in his house at Neuilly, the then elegant suburb of Paris, on August 16th, 1900. His body, carried to Lisbon on a warship, was received by the whole town, and was laid in a vault lent by aristocratic friends. By a last irony, there was some embarrassment as the coffin was too large to pass through the gate. He was later to find a final resting place in Aveiro.

After the funeral, Dona Emilia de Castro Eça de Queiroz gave her late husband an ultimate proof of her affection by ensuring the survival of his work. With the help of Batalha Reis, Ramalho Ortigão, and Luis de Magalhães, who were closest to Eça de Queiroz in intelligence and friendship, she collected and published in book form all the sparse papers, tales, chronicles, articles, all the ephemerides of a life given over to writing.

These friends completed the publication of posthumous works, as A Cidade e as Serras, and of several important texts, written a long time before, and previously unpublished. Count Abranhos, Alves & Co, The Capital,, and The Tragedy in Rua das Flores may not have the weight of the three major novels, but they make very pleasant reading, quite characteristic of de Queiroz manner.