Chapter 30 Summary

Biagio reflects on the life his brother lived and his motivation to demonstrate a way of understanding and interacting with people he could only communicate completely by living it. He wishes the ideas that inspired them as youths in the eighteenth century made more of a footprint on the systems of the nineteenth, but is dismayed to see they have not.

He describes the one time he climbed the tree to ask his now 65-year-old brother whether he would come down, now that his point was so thoroughly made, saying there is a time for landing even for men who spend their whole lives at sea. Cosimo refuses, and sits still and silent for long periods, people gathering below him to talk amongst themselves but only addressing Cosimo occasionally, understanding that he no longer wishes to talk. His health continues to decline until...