In her next assignment, Martha stapled the note:
Goya is part of our course, 'The Spanish Artists of Light'? More like darkness. I've never seen anything so depressing. Enough of war, loss, and doom and gloom! Don't you like anyone whose work brings joy to the world? Does everything have to be refracted through a prism of bitterness? What happened to you to be such a downer?
When she got her red book back, it only had the grade, A. There was no note. She continued to get good grades for her essays about Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán. But she had upset him. Well, tough. He needed to be told. What was so bad about his life, anyway?