Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas E-Book

Machado de Assis

• Herausgeber: Publishdrive
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Published in 1881, *Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas* marks a watershed moment in Brazilian literature. In this masterpiece, Machado de Assis inaugurates Realism in Brazil and revolutionizes narrative by giving voice to the dead himself. Brás Cubas, now deceased, writes his memoirs without remorse, censorship, or convention, observing the world of the living with the ironic gaze of one who has nothing left to lose. Through short, incisive chapters filled with subtle humor, the narrator takes us on a journey between the sublime and the grotesque, the comic and the tragic. The text's apparent lightness conceals a profound critique of 19th-century society—of human vanity, false virtues, moralism, and the hypocrisy of the elite. Brás Cubas is, at once, narrator and object of study, a symbol of a generation that lived without purpose, seeking glory and pleasure amidst existential emptiness. With his innovative and witty writing, Machado de Assis breaks the barriers of literary time and space. His direct dialogue with the reader, his philosophical digressions, and his play on irony make the novel a unique, modern, and deeply psychological experience. It is a work that defies labels and anticipates narrative techniques that would influence writers worldwide. This digital edition, fully revised and adapted to contemporary Portuguese, preserves the genius of the original text but offers a more fluid and accessible reading experience for today's audience. It is ideal for students, researchers, and literature lovers who wish to understand why *Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas* remains so vibrant, disturbing, and modern more than a century after its publication. More than a narrative about death, this book is a celebration of life and its contradictions—a timeless portrait of the human being, with its weaknesses, desires, and illusions. Reading *Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas* is to delve into the soul of an author who knew how to laugh at the human condition itself with elegance and lucidity. Purchase the digital edition of Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas now and discover the genius that made Machado de Assis the greatest Brazilian writer of all time.

Leseprobe

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Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

2025© – Digital World. All rights reserved.

E-ISBN: 9790510889356

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Editorial direction

Fabricio D. Marchesan

Content creators

Plinio Guimarães

Elizabeth Morsegai

Lineu Torquato

Sheila Calazans

Lincoln LT Baptista

Rebeca Montserrat

Erica Dias

Revision

Raquel Salazar

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Digital World

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About this E-book

Reference text:

Originally published by Editora Garnier, Rio de Janeiro, 1899.

Digital Edition for Kindle and other reading devices

Adapted and edited for vernacular Portuguese

By Digital World Brazil

To the worm that

first he gnawed on the cold meat

of my corpse,

I dedicate,

as a fond memory,

these Posthumous Memoirs

Prologue to the third edition

The first edition of these Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas was edited in pieces in the Brazilian Journal in the 1880s. Later, when it was published as a book, I corrected the text in several places. Now that I've had to revise it for the third edition, I've made some further corrections and removed two or three dozen lines. Thus composed, this work, which seems to have found some favor with the public, is once again published.

Capistrano de Abreu, reporting on the publication of the book, asked:

"Is *The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas* a novel?" Macedo Soares, in a letter he wrote to me around that time, amiably recalled *Travels in my land*. To the first, the late Brás Cubas had already responded (as the reader has seen and will see in his prologue below), yes and no, that it was a novel for some and not for others. About the second, the deceased explained himself thus: "It is a diffuse work, in which I, Brás Cubas, if I adopted the free form of a Sterne or a Xavier de Maistre, I don't know if I injected some pessimistic grumblings." All these people traveled: Xavier de Maistre around his room, Garret in his own land, Sterne in the lands of others. Of Brás Cubas, it can be said that he traveled around life.

What makes my Brás Cubas a particular author is what he calls

"Pessimistic Grumpiness." There is in the soul of this book, however cheerful it may seem, a bitter and harsh feeling, far from originating from its models. It is a cup that may have the work of the same school, but it carries a different wine. I will say no more so as not to become a critic of a deceased person, who painted himself and others as he saw fit.

Machado de Assis.

TO THE READER

That Stendhal confessed to having written one of his books for a hundred readers is both astonishing and dismaying. What is not surprising, nor likely to be dismaying, is if this other book doesn't have Stendhal's hundred readers, nor fifty, nor twenty, or at most, ten. Ten? Perhaps five. It is, in truth, a diffuse work, into which I, Brás Cubas, if I adopted the free form of a Sterne, or a Xavier de Maistre, I don't know if I injected some pessimistic grumblings. Maybe so. Work of the deceased. I wrote it with the pen of mockery and the ink of melancholy, and it's not difficult to foresee what might appear from this union. Moreover, serious people will find in the book some semblance of pure romance, while frivolous people will not find in it their usual romance; lo, it is deprived of the esteem of the serious and the love of the frivolous, which are the two highest pillars of public opinion.

But I still hope to garner public support, and the first remedy is to avoid an explicit and lengthy prologue. The best prologue is the one that holds the fewest things, or the one that says them in an obscure and truncated way. Consequently, I avoid recounting the extraordinary process I employed in composing these Memoirs, crafted here in the other world. It would be interesting, but not even extensive, and in fact, unnecessary to understand the work. The work itself is everything: if it pleases you, dear reader, I'll pay for the task; if you don't, I'll pay you with a flick of my wrist, and goodbye.

Bras Cubas.

CHAPTER ONE / DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

For some time, I hesitated over whether to begin these memoirs at the beginning or the end—that is, whether to place my birth or my death first. Supposing common usage is to begin with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a deceased author, but a deceased author, for whom the grave was another cradle; the second is that the writing would thus be more gallant and fresher. Moses, who also recounted his death, placed it not at the introit, but at the end: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.

With that said, I expired at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon in August 1869, on my beautiful farm in Catumbi. I was about sixty-four years old, strong and prosperous, single, with a fortune of about three hundred thousand, and I was gone with to the cemetery by eleven friends. Eleven friends! The truth is, there were no letters or announcements. Furthermore, it was raining—a fine, sad, and constant drizzle, so constant and so sad that it led one of those last-minute faithful to interject this ingenious idea into the speech he delivered at my graveside: "You who knew him, gentlemen, can say with me that nature seems to be mourning the irreparable loss of one of the most beautiful characters that have ever graced humanity. This somber air, these drops in the sky, those dark clouds that cover the blue like a funereal crepe—all this is the raw and cruel pain that gnaws at Nature's innermost being all this is a sublime praise of our illustrious deceased."

Good and faithful friend! No, I do not regret the twenty policies I left you. And that was how I arrived at the end of my days; that was how I headed for Hamlet's undiscovered country, without the young prince's anxieties or doubts, but slow and unsteady, like someone leaving the show late. Late and bored. Nine or ten people saw me go, among them three ladies, my sister Sabina, married to Cotrim, her daughter—a lily of the valley—and...

Be patient! In a moment, I'll tell you who the third lady was. Be content to know that this anonymous woman, even if she doesn't seem to, suffered more than her relatives. It's true, she suffered more.

I'm not saying she wept, I'm not saying she let herself roll on the floor, convulsed. Nor was my death an overly dramatic thing... A bachelor dying at sixty-four doesn't seem to have all the elements of a tragedy. And given that it did, the least suitable thing for this anonymous woman was to appear so. Standing at the head of the bed, her eyes dull, her mouth half-open, the sad lady could hardly believe my demise.

— “Dead! dead!” he said to himself.

And her imagination, like the storks that an illustrious traveler saw taking flight from Ilisso to the African shores, despite the ruins and the times — this lady's imagination also flew over the present wreckage to the shores of a youthful Africa...

Let her go; we'll go there later; we'll go there when I've recovered from my early years. Now, I want to die peacefully, methodically, listening to the sobs of the ladies, the low speeches of the men, the rain drumming on the leaves of the timothy trees in the farmhouse, and the shrill sound of a razor sharpener sharpening outside, at a leatherworker's door. I swear to you that this orchestration of death was much less sad than it might have seemed. From a certain point on, it became delightful. Life writhed in my chest, with the surges of a sea wave, my consciousness faded, I descended into physical and moral immobility, and my body became a plant, and stone, mud, and nothing at all.

I died of pneumonia, but if I tell you that it was less the pneumonia than a grand and useful idea that caused my death, you might not believe me, but it's true. I'll briefly explain the case. Judge for yourself.

CHAPTER II / THE PATCH

Indeed, one morning, while strolling around the farm, an idea stuck in my brain's trapeze. Once it was hanging, it began to flail, toe-to-toe, and to perform the most daring somersaults imaginable. I stood there, contemplating it. Suddenly, it took a great leap, stretching its arms and legs until it formed the shape of an X: decipher me or I'll devour you.

This idea was nothing less than the invention of a sublime medicine, an anti-hypochondriac poultice, designed to alleviate our melancholic humanity. In the petition for privilege I drafted at the time, I drew the government's attention to this truly Christian result. However, I did not deny my friends the financial advantages that would result from the distribution of a product with such profound and profound effects. Now, however, that I am on the other side of life, I can confess everything: what influenced me most was the pleasure of seeing printed in newspapers, on display shelves, in leaflets, on street corners, and finally on the medicine boxes, these three words: Brás Cubas Poultice.

Why deny it? I had a passion for noise, for the poster, for the rocket of tears. Perhaps the modest will argue this flaw; however, I trust that this talent will be recognized by the skilled. Thus, my idea had two faces, like medals, one turned toward the public, the other toward me. On one side, philanthropy and profit; on the other, a thirst for fame. Let's say: love of glory.

An uncle of mine, a canon with a full prebend, used to say that the love of temporal glory was the ruin of souls who should only covet eternal glory. To which another uncle, an officer in one of the old infantry corps, retorted that the love of glory was the most truly human thing in man, and so, his most genuine feature.

Let the reader decide between the soldier and the canon; I'll return to the plaster.

CHAPTER III / GENEALOGY

But, since I mentioned my two uncles, let me give a brief genealogical sketch here.

The founder of my family was a certain Damião Cubas, who flourished in the first half of the eighteenth century. He was a cooper by trade, a native of Rio de Janeiro, where he would have died in penury and obscurity had he only practiced cooperage. But no; he became a farmer, planted, harvested, and exchanged his produce for good and honorable patacas, until he died, leaving a substantial fortune to his son, Luís Cubas. This young man truly begins the series of my grandparents—the grandparents my family has always confessed—because Damião Cubas was, after all, a cooper, and perhaps a bad one, while Luís Cubas studied in Coimbra, excelled in the State, and was a close friend of the Viceroy, Count da Cunha.

Since this nickname, Cubas, smacked too much of cooperage, my father, Damião's great-grandson, claimed that the nickname had been given to a knight, a hero in the African expeditions, as a reward for his feat of capturing three hundred Cubas from the Moors. My father was a man of imagination; he escaped cooperage on the wings of a calembour. He was a good character, my father, a worthy and loyal man like few others. He had, it's true, a touch of foolishness, but who isn't a bit foolish in this world? It's worth noting that he didn't resort to invention until after experimenting with forgery; first, he entered the family of my famous namesake, the Captain General, Brás Cubas, who founded the town of São Vicente, where he died in 1592, and for that reason, he gave me the name Brás. However, the captain-major's family opposed him, and it was then that he imagined the three hundred Moorish vats.

Some members of my family are still alive, my niece Venância, for example, the lily of the valley, which is the flower of the ladies of her time; her father, Cotrim, lives, a man who..., but let's not anticipate events; let's put an end to our poultice once and for all.

CHAPTER IV / THE FIXED IDEA

My idea, after so many antics, had become a fixed idea.

God save you, reader, from a fixed idea, better a speck than a plank in the eye. Look at Cavour; it was the fixed idea of Italian unity that killed him. Indeed, Bismarck didn't die, but it's important to remember that nature is a great capricious and historically an eternal laurel. For example, Suetonius gave us a Claudius who was a simpleton—or "a pumpkin," as Seneca called him—and a Titus who deserved to be the delights of Rome. A professor came along in modern times and found a way to prove that of the two Caesars, the delicious, the absolutely delicious, was Seneca's "pumpkin." And you, Madame Lucrezia, flower of the Borgias, if a poet painted you as the Catholic Messalina, an incredulous Gregorovius appeared and erased that quality considerably, and, if you didn't become a lily, you didn't become a swamp either. I allow myself to be between the poet and the sage.

Long live history, the fickle history that is useful for everything; and, returning to the fixed idea, I will say that it is this that makes men strong and mad; the mobile, vague, or iridescent idea is the one that makes the Claudii — Suetonius' formula.

My idea was fixed, fixed like... I can't think of anything quite fixed in this world: perhaps the moon, perhaps the pyramids of Egypt, perhaps the late Germanic diet. Let the reader choose the comparison that best suits him, see it, and don't turn up your nose at me just because we haven't yet reached the narrative part of these memoirs. We'll get there. I believe you prefer anecdotes to reflection, like the other readers, your fellow readers, and I think you're right. Well, we'll get there.

However, it is important to say that this book is written with composure, with the composure of a man already unfazed by the brevity of the century, a supremely philosophical work, of an unequal philosophy, now austere, now playful, something that neither edifies nor destroys, neither inflames nor delights, and is, however, more than pastime and less than apostolate.

Come on; straighten your nose, and let's get back to the poultice. Let's leave history to its elegant lady's whims. None of us fought the Battle of Salamis, none of us wrote the Augsburg Confession; for my part, if I ever remember Cromwell, it's only because of the idea that His Highness, with the same hand that shut down Parliament, would have imposed the Bras Cubas poultice on the English. Don't laugh at this shared victory of pharmacy and puritanism. Who doesn't know that beside every large, public, ostentatious flag, there are often several other, modestly private flags, hoisted and fluttering in their shadow, and more than a few outlast it? Roughly speaking, it's like the small fry that took shelter in the shadow of the feudal castle; it fell, and the small fry stayed. The truth is, it became large and chatelaine... No, the comparison is useless.

CHAPTER V /IN WHICH A LADY'S EAR APPEARS

But when, while I was busy preparing and refining my invention, I was struck by a direct draft, I fell ill at once and did not seek treatment. I had the poultice in my brain; I carried with me the fixed idea of the mad and the strong. I saw myself, in the distance, rising from the ground of the crowds and soaring to the Heavens, like an immortal eagle, and it is not before such a sublime spectacle that a man can feel the pain that pierces him. The next day I was worse; I finally treated myself, but incompletely, without method, care, or persistence; such was the origin of the illness that brought me to eternity. You already know that I died on a Friday, an unlucky day, and I believe I have proven that it was my invention that killed me. There are fewer lucid and no less triumphant demonstrations.

It was not impossible, however, that I would reach the height of a century and appear in the public gaze, among the ancients. I was healthy and robust. Suppose instead of laying the foundations of a pharmaceutical invention, I was trying to assemble the elements of a political institution or a religious reform.

The current of air came, which surpasses human calculation in effectiveness, and there it all went. That's how the fate of men works.

With this reflection, I said goodbye to the woman, I wouldn't say the most discreet, but certainly the most beautiful among her contemporaries, the anonymous woman from the first chapter, the one whose imagination, like the storks of Ilisso... She was then 54 years old, a ruin, an imposing ruin. Imagine the reader whom we loved, she and I, many years before, and who one day, already ill, sees her appear at the bedroom door...

CHAPTER VI /CHIMÈNE, QUI L'EÛT DIT? RODRIGUE, QUI L'EÛT CRU?

I see her appear at the bedroom door, pale, moved, dressed in black, and remain there for a minute, either unwilling to enter or detained by the presence of a man who was with me. From the bed where I lay, I contemplated her for that time, forgetting to say anything to her or making a gesture. It had been two years since we had seen each other, and I saw her now not as she was, but as she had been, as we both had been, because a mysterious Hezekiah had turned back the sun on our youthful days.

The sun retreated, I shook off all miseries, and this handful of dust, which death was about to scatter into the eternity of nothingness, was more powerful than time, which is the minister of death. No water of Juventus (In Roman mythology, Juventus was a nymph whom Jupiter [Zeus in Greek mythology] transformed into a spring that rejuvenated people. Hence the term youth) could equal simple longing there.

Believe me, the lesser evil is to remember; let no one trust in present happiness; there is a drop of Cain's drool in it. Once time has passed and the spasm has ceased, then yes, perhaps one can genuinely enjoy it, because between one and the other of these two illusions, the better is the one that is enjoyed without pain.

The evocation didn't last long; reality soon took over; the present expelled the past. Perhaps I'll explain to the reader, somewhere in this book, my theory of human editions. What's important to know for now is that Virgília—her name was Virgília—entered the bedroom, firmly, with the gravity given her clothes and age, and came to my bed. The stranger got up and left. He was a man who visited me every day to talk about exchange, colonization, and the need to develop the railroad; nothing more interesting to a dying man. He left; Virgília remained standing; for a while, we stared at each other, without uttering a word. Who would have thought? Of two great lovers of two unbridled passions, there was nothing left there, twenty years later; there were only two withered hearts, devastated by life and sated by it, I don't know if in equal measure, but sated at last. Virgília now had the beauty of old age, an austere and maternal air; she was less thin than when I saw her for the last time, at a São João festival in Tijuca; and because she was one of those who resist a lot, only now were her dark hair beginning to be interspersed with a few strands of silver.

"Are you visiting the dead?" I asked her. "Well, the dead!" Virgilia replied with a pout. And after shaking my hands:

— I'm trying to get the bums off the street.

It lacked the tearful caress of other times, but its voice was friendly and sweet. It sat down. I was alone, at home, with a simple nurse; we could speak to each other without danger. Virgilia gave me long news from abroad, narrating it gracefully, with a certain hint of bad language that was the spice of the conversation; I, about to leave the world, felt a satanic pleasure in mocking it, in persuading myself that I was leaving nothing.

"What ideas are these!" Virgilia interrupted me, somewhat angrily. "Look, I'm not coming back. Die! We all have to die; it's enough to be alive."

And looking at the clock:

— Jesus! It's three o'clock. I'm leaving.

— Already?

— Already, I'll come tomorrow or the day after.

—I don't know if that's any good, I retorted; the patient is a bachelor and there are no ladies in the house...

— Your sister?

— He'll come and spend a few days here, but it can't be before Saturday.

Virgilia reflected for a moment, shrugged her shoulders and said gravely:

—I'm old! Nobody notices me anymore. But, to drop any doubts, I'll go with Mr.

Nhonhô was a bachelor, the only child of his marriage, who, at the age of five, had been an unwitting accomplice in our love affairs. They arrived together two days later, and I confess that, upon seeing them there, in my bedroom, I was overcome with shyness that didn't allow me to at once respond to the boy's kind words. Virgília guessed me and said to her son:

— Master, don't pay attention to that big sly one over there; he won't talk to make you believe he's dying.

Her son smiled, I think I smiled too, and it all ended in pure fun. Virgilia was serene and smiling, with the appearance of an immaculate life. Not a suspicious look, not a gesture that might betray anything; an equality of speech and spirit, a self-possession that seemed, and perhaps was, rare.

As we casually touched on some illegitimate love affairs, half-secret, half-public, I saw her speak with disdain and a touch of indignation about the woman in question, who was, in fact, her friend. Her son felt satisfied, hearing that dignified and strong word, and I wondered what the hawks would say of us, if Buffon had been born a hawk...

It was my delirium that was beginning.

CHAPTER VII / THE DELIRIUM

As far as I know, no one has ever reported their own delirium; I'll do it, and science will thank me. If the reader isn't given to contemplating these mental phenomena, they can skip the chapter; go straight to the story. However uninterested you may be, I always tell you that it's interesting to know what went on in my head for about twenty to thirty minutes.

First, I took the form of a Chinese barber, pot-bellied, right-handed, shaving a mandarin, who paid me for my work with pinches and sweets: mandarin whims.

Soon after, I felt myself transformed into the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas, printed in a volume, and bound in Morocco, with silver clasps and prints; this idea gave my body the most complete immobility; and even now it reminds me that, my hands being the clasps of the book, and I crossing them over my belly, someone was uncrossing them (Virgilia, no doubt), because the attitude gave her the image of a corpse.

Recently, restored to human form, I saw a hippopotamus arrive and snatch me away. I let myself go, silent, whether out of fear or trust, I don't know; but soon the speed became so dizzying that I dared to question it, and with some skill I told it that the journey seemed to me to be aimless.

—You're wrong, replied to the animal, we're going back to the origin of the centuries.

I hinted that it must be extremely far, but the hippopotamus either didn't understand or didn't hear me, or perhaps he wasn't pretending to do one of those things. And, when I asked him, since he was speaking, if he was descended from Achilles' horse or Balaam's donkey, he replied with a gesture peculiar to these two quadrupeds: he wiggled his ears. For my part, I closed my eyes and let myself go to my own devices. Now, I can't bear to confess that I felt a certain tingle of curiosity to know where the origin of the centuries lay, whether it was as mysterious as the origin of the Nile, and above all, whether it was worth anything more or less than the consummation of those same centuries: reflections of a diseased brain. Since I was walking with my eyes closed, I couldn't see the path; I only remember that the sensation of cold increased with the journey, and that there came a time when I seemed to enter the region of eternal ice. Sure enough, I opened my eyes and saw my animal galloping across a snow-white plain, along with several large snow-like animals. Everything was snowing; a snowy sun was freezing us. I tried to speak, but could only grunt this anxious question:

— Where are we?

— We have already passed Eden.

— Well, let's stop at Abraham's tent.

—But if we walked backwards! he retorted, mocking my mount.

I was embarrassed and stunned. The journey seemed tedious and extravagant, the cold uncomfortable, the driving rough, and the outcome intangible. And then—the patient's thoughts—given that we had finished as planned, it was not impossible that the centuries, irritated by the discovery of their origin, would crush me between their claws, which must have been as ancient as they. While I thought this, we devoured the path, and the plane flew beneath our feet, until the animal stopped, and I could look around me more calmly. Just look; I saw nothing but the immense whiteness of the snow, which this time had invaded the sky itself, until then blue. Perhaps, from time to time, I would see a plant or two, enormous, brutish, waving its broad leaves in the wind. The silence of that region was like that of the tomb: it had been said that the life of things had become dull before man.

Did it fall from the air? Did it detach itself from the earth? I don't know; I know that an immense figure, a woman's figure, appeared to me then, staring at me with eyes as radiant as the sun. Everything about that figure had the vastness of wild forms, and everything escaped the comprehension of human sight, for its contours were lost in the surroundings, and what seemed dense was often diaphanous. Stupefied, I said nothing, not even a cry; but after a while, which was brief, I asked who it was and what its name was: out of delirious curiosity.

— Call me Nature or Pandora; I am your mother and your enemy.

At this last word, I recoiled a little, overcome with fright. The figure let out a loud laugh, which produced around us the effect of a typhoon; the plants twisted, and a long moan broke the silence of the external things.

"Don't be alarmed," she said, "my enmity doesn't kill; it's above all through life that it asserts itself. You live; I don't want another scourge."

—Alive? I asked, digging my nails into my hands, as if to confirm my existence.

"Yes, worm, you live. Do not fear losing that rag that is your pride; you will taste, for a few more hours, the bread of pain and the wine of misery. You live even now that you have gone mad, you live; and if your conscience recovers an instant of wisdom, you will say that you want to live."

Saying this, the vision reached out, grabbed me by the hair, and lifted me into the air as if I were a feather. Only then could I see his face up close, which was enormous. Nothing was more still; no violent contortion, no expression of hatred or ferocity; the single, general, complete expression was one of selfish impassiveness, of eternal deafness, of immobile will. Rage, if it’s any, remained locked in the heart. At the same time, in that face with its glacial expression, there was an air of youth, a mixture of strength and vigor, before which I felt the weakest and most decrepit of beings.

—Do you understand me? she said, after some time of mutual contemplation.

"No," I replied, "I don't even want to understand you; you're absurd, you're a fable. I'm dreaming, surely, or, if it's true, that I've gone mad, you're nothing more than a deranged conception, that is, a vain thing, which, absent reason, can neither rule nor touch. Nature, you? The Nature I know is only mother and not enemy; she doesn't make life a scourge, nor, like you, wears that indifferent face, like the tomb. And why Pandora?"

— Because I carry in my bag good and evil, and the greatest of all, hope, the consolation of men. Do you tremble?

— Yes, your gaze fascinates me.

—I believe, I am not only life; I am also death, and you are about to return to me what I lent you. Great lecher, the voluptuousness of nothingness awaits you.

When this word echoed like thunder in that immense valley, it seemed to me that it was the last sound that reached my ears; I seemed to feel the sudden decomposition of myself. Then I looked at her with pleading eyes and asked for a few more years.

"Poor minute!" he exclaimed. "What do you want for a few more moments of life? To devour and be devoured later? Aren't you tired of the spectacle and the struggle? You know well everything I've presented you with, less vile or less distressing: the dawn of the day, the melancholy of the afternoon, the stillness of the night, the aspects of the Earth, sleep—in short, the greatest benefit of my hands. What more do you want, you sublime idiot?"

—Just live, I ask nothing more of you. Who put this love of life in my heart, if not you? And if I love life, why would you strike yourself, killing me?

"Because I no longer need you. Time doesn't care about the passing minute, but about the coming minute. The coming minute is strong, joyful, it supposes it carries eternity within itself, and it brings death, and perishes like the other, but time persists. Selfishness, did you say? Yes, selfishness, I have no other law. Selfishness, preservation. The jaguar kills the calf because of the jaguar reasons that it must live, and if the calf is tender, so much better: this is the universal statute. Climb up and look."

Saying this, he carried me to the top of a mountain. I inclined my eyes to one of the slopes and contemplated, for a long time, in the distance, through a fog, a unique thing. Imagine, reader, a reduction of centuries, and a parade of them all, all races, all passions, the tumult of Empires, the war of appetites and hatreds, the reciprocal destruction of beings and things.

Such was the spectacle, a bitter and curious spectacle. The history of man and the Earth had an intensity that neither imagination nor science could give it, because science is slower and imagination vaguer, while what I saw there was the living condensation of all time. To describe it, one would have to stare at the lightning. The centuries flashed by in a whirlwind, and yet, because the eyes of delirium are different, I saw everything that passed before me—scourges and delights—from this thing called glory to that other called misery, and I saw love multiplying misery, and I saw misery aggravating weakness. Then came the devouring greed, the inflaming anger, the drooling envy, and the hoe and the pen, damp with sweat, and ambition, hunger, vanity, melancholy, wealth, love, and all of them shook man, like a rattle, until they destroyed him, like a rag. They were the various forms of evil, which sometimes bit the viscera, sometimes bit the thought, and eternally paraded with their harlequin robes around the human species. The pain would sometimes subside, but it would subside to indifference, which was a dreamless sleep, or to pleasure, which was a bastard pain. Then man, scourged and rebellious, ran before the fatality of things, chasing a nebulous and elusive figure, made of scraps, one scrap of the intangible, another of the improbable, another of the invisible, all sewn together precariously with the needle of imagination; and this figure—nothing less than the utopia of happiness—either perpetually eluded him, or allowed itself to be caught by the sash, and man would clasp it to his chest, and then it would laugh, like a mockery, and vanish, like an illusion.

Upon contemplating such calamity, I could not hold a cry of anguish, which Nature or Pandora heard without protest or laughter; and I do not know by what law of cerebral disorder, it was I who began to laugh—an unbalanced and idiotic laugh.

"You're right," I said, "it's fun and worthwhile—perhaps monotonous—but worthwhile. When Job cursed the day he was conceived, it was because he felt the urge to watch the spectacle from up here. Come on, Pandora, open your womb and digest me; it's fun, but digest me."

The answer was to forcefully compel me to look down and see the centuries that continued to pass, swift and turbulent, the generations superimposed upon generations, some sad, like the Hebrews of captivity, others joyful, like Commodus's profligacy, and all punctually at the tomb. I wanted to flee, but a mysterious force held my feet; then I said to myself: "Well, the centuries pass, mine will arrive, and it will pass too, until the last one, which will give me the decipherment of eternity." And I fixed my eyes, and continued to watch the ages, which came and went, now calm and resolute, I don't know if even joyful. Perhaps joyful. Each century brought its share of shadow and light, of apathy and combat, of truth and error, and its procession of systems, of innovative ideas, of new illusions; each of them burst forth with the greenery of a spring, and then yellowed, only to be rejuvenated later. While life thus had the regularity of a calendar, history and civilization were made, and man, naked and unarmed, armed and clothed himself, built the hovel and the palace, the rude village and the hundred-gate Thebes, created the science that scrutinizes and the art that delights, became an orator, a mechanic, a philosopher, traveled the face of the globe, descended to the belly of the Earth, ascended to the sphere of the clouds, thus collaborating in the mysterious work with which he entertained the necessity of life and the melancholy of helplessness. My gaze, weary and distracted, finally saw the present century arrive, and behind it the future ones. That one came agile, dexterous, vibrant, full of himself, a little diffuse, bold, knowledgeable, but in the end as miserable as the first ones, and so it went and so the others went, with the same speed and the same monotony.

I redoubled my attention; I stared; I was finally going to see the last one—the last one! But by then the speed of the march was so great it was beyond comprehension; compared to it, the flash of lightning would have been a century. Perhaps that's why the objects began to shift; some grew, others shrank, others were lost in the surroundings; a mist covered everything—except the hippopotamus that had brought me there, which, in fact, began to shrink, shrink, shrink, until it was the size of a cat. It was indeed a cat. I stared at it; it was my cat Sultan, playing at the bedroom door with a ball of paper...

CHAPTER VIII /REASON AGAINST NONSENSE

The reader now understood that it was Reason who returned to the house, and invited Foolishness to leave, crying out, and with better justice, the words of Tartuffe:

La maison est à moi, c'est à vous d'en sortir.

But it's a long-standing habit of Sandice's to develop a love for other people's houses, so that, even if she owns just one, she'll be hardened to eviction. It's a habit; it can't be shaken; she's hardened to shame long ago. Now, if we consider the immense number of houses she occupies, some temporarily, others during her quiet seasons, we'll conclude that this amiable pilgrim is the terror of the owners. In our case, there was almost a commotion at the door of my brain, because the newcomer didn't want to hand over the house, and the owner wouldn't budge from her intention to take what was hers. After all, Sandice was content with a little corner in the attic.

—No, madam, replied Reason, I am tired of giving you attics, tired and experienced, what you want is to pass smoothly from the attic to the dining room, from there to the guest room and the rest.

—Okay, let me stay a little longer, I'm on the trail of a mystery...

— What mystery?

—Of two, Sandice added, the one of life and the one of death; I only ask you for ten minutes.

Reason began to laugh.

— You will always be the same thing... always the same thing... always the same thing...

And saying this, he grabbed her wrists and dragged her outside; then he went in and locked himself in. Sandice still moaned a few pleas, growled a few annoyances, but she quickly got over it, stuck out her tongue in a furious expression, and walked away...