It is around Maria Luiza's body that the characters of Garcia and Fortunate will manifest in full. She is the axis of the transvaluation of values, of the turning of The Wheel of Fortune. Around the coffin, we see Garcia as the byronian (almost medieval) devastated man who cries over the body of his dead, forbidden, unreachable love - now immortalized in her youth and perfection; there, we also see Fortunate as the cold-hearted observer, who sucks on Garcia's pain to the point of no longer mourning the death of his wife, and not even resenting his friend's betrayal.
There is, of course, a fine piece of scholarly irony here, because Machado de Assis is known for his ability to turn against the Romantic values of the Literature which generated him. Garcia, representative of such values, is here demoralized, as Fortnuate becomes our sole fountain of admiration in his full strength and sheer sincerity - human, all too human. But this text goes far beyond mere aesthetical polemics.
Edgar Allan Poe, the Romantic poet from the 19th century, went far enough even to say that "the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world", in his Philosophy of Composition, 1846. Cordelia, Ophelia, Ines de Castro and ultimately the Church as Christ's bride, for whom He died and ressurrected in order to give life to, are all examples of such a powerful and resonant theme in poetry.
Such is the importance of Maria Luiza to this story: she is the eye of the whirlpool, the axis of the Wheel and the element before which all things are revealed. The image is a detail of the famous John Everett Millai's Ophelia.
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