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- Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Tales of Rio de Janeiro", Machado de Assis explores love, ambition, and social conventions in 19th-century Brazil. These stories explore human emotions with irony and psychological depth, addressing themes like betrayal, destiny, and social hypocrisy. With elegant prose and keen observations, Machado presents unforgettable characters and sharp critiques of Rio de Janeiro's bourgeoisie. This collection offers a fascinating glimpse into the early works of one of Brazil's greatest writers. The short stories that make up this collection are: Miss Dollar, Luís Soares, The Woman in Black, The Secret of Augusta, Confessions of a Young Widow, Straight Line and Curved Line, and Friar Simon.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Tales of Rio de Janeiro
Machado de Assis
SYNOPSIS
In Tales of Rio de Janeiro, Machado de Assis explores love, ambition, and social conventions in 19th-century Brazil. These stories explore human emotions with irony and psychological depth, addressing themes like betrayal, destiny, and social hypocrisy. With elegant prose and keen observations, Machado presents unforgettable characters and sharp critiques of Rio de Janeiro’s bourgeoisie. This collection offers a fascinating glimpse into the early works of one of Brazil’s greatest writers. The short stories that make up this collection are: Miss Dollar, Luís Soares, The Woman in Black, The Secret of Augusta, Confessions of a Young Widow, Straight Line and Curved Line, and Friar Simon.
Keywords
Society, Irony, Psychology
NOTICE
This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.
Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.
Miss Dollar
I
It suited the novel if the reader didn't know who Miss Dollar was for a long time. But on the other hand, without introducing Miss Dollar, the author would be forced into long digressions, which would fill the paper without advancing the action. There can be no hesitation: I'm going to introduce you to Miss Dollar.
If the reader is a young man of a melancholic disposition, he will imagine Miss Dollar to be a pale, slender English woman, scant of flesh and blood, with two large blue eyes in her face and long blonde tresses blowing in the wind. The girl in question must be as vapid and ideal as a Shakespearean creation; she must be the contrast to the British roastbeef on which the freedom of the United Kingdom is nourished. Such a Miss Dollar should have the poet Tennyson by heart and read Lamartine in the original; if she knows Portuguese, she should delight in reading the sonnets of Camões or the Cantos of Gonçalves Dias. Tea and milk should be the diet of such a creature, with some confectionery and cookies added to satisfy the stomach's urgencies. His speech should be the murmur of an Aeolian harp; his love a swoon, his life a contemplation, his death a sigh.
The figure is poetic, but it's not the heroine of the novel.
Suppose the reader is not given to such reveries and melancholy, in which case he imagines a totally different Miss Dollar. This time she'll be a robust American, with blood running down her cheeks, rounded shapes, lively and burning eyes, a woman made, remade and perfect. A friend of a good table and a good drink, this Miss Dollar will prefer a quarter of lamb to a page of Longfellow, a very natural thing when the stomach is crying out for it, and she will never understand the poetry of the sunset. She will be a good mother of the family according to the doctrine of some of the masters of civilization, that is to say, fertile and ignorant.
The reader who has passed their second youth and sees before them an old age with no recourse will no longer feel the same way. For them, the Miss Dollar truly worthy of being told in a few pages would be a good Englishwoman in her fifties, endowed with a few thousand pounds sterling, who, arriving in Brazil in search of a subject to write a novel about, made a real novel by marrying the aforementioned reader. Such a Miss Dollar would be incomplete if she didn't have green glasses and a large curl of gray hair at each end. White lace gloves and a linen hat in the shape of a gourd would be the last coat of this magnificent overseas type.
One reader, smarter than the others, came up with the fact that the heroine of the novel is not and was not English, but Brazilian, and that the name Miss Dollar simply means that the girl is rich.
This discovery would be excellent if it were accurate; unfortunately, neither it nor the others are accurate. The Miss Dollar of the novel is not the romantic girl, nor the robust woman, nor the old literary woman, nor the rich Brazilian. This time the readers' proverbial wits fail them; Miss Dollar is a little bitch.
For some people, the quality of the heroine will make them lose interest in the novel. Clear mistake. Miss Dollar, despite being nothing more than a greyhound, had the honor of seeing her name in the public papers before she entered this book. The Jornal do Comércio and Correio Mercantil published the following reverberating lines of promise in their advertising columns:
A little greyhound dog went astray last night, the 30th. It goes by the name of Miss Dollar. Anyone who has found her and wants to take her to Rua de Mata-cavalos no... will receive a reward of two hundred thousand réis. Miss Dollar has a collar around her neck with a padlock that reads: De tout mon coeur.
All the people who were in urgent need of two hundred thousand réis, and had the good fortune to read that advertisement, walked the streets of Rio de Janeiro that day with extreme caution, to see if they could spot the fugitive Miss Dollar. Any greyhound that appeared in the distance was pursued with tenacity until it turned out not to be the animal they were looking for. But all this hunting for the two hundred thousand-réis was completely useless, since on the day the ad appeared, Miss Dollar was already holed up in the house of a man who lived in Cajueiros and collected dogs.
II
No one could say what induced Dr. Mendonça to collect dogs; some thought it was simply a passion for this symbol of fidelity or servility; others thought that, filled with a deep dislike for men, Mendonça thought it was good warfare to worship dogs.
Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that no one had a more beautiful and varied collection than he did. He had them of all breeds, sizes and colors. He cared for them as if they were his own children; if one died, he became melancholy. It could almost be said that, in Mendonça's mind, the dog weighed as much as love, according to a famous expression: take the dog out of the world, and the world will be a wasteland.
The superficial reader might conclude from this that our Mendonça was an eccentric man. He wasn't. Mendonça was a man like the others; he liked dogs like others like flowers. The dogs were his roses and violets; he cultivated them with the same care. He liked flowers too, but he liked them on the plants on which they grew: cutting a jasmine or trapping a canary seemed to him to be the same offense.
Dr. Mendonça was a man in his thirties, well-groomed, with frank and distinguished manners. He had graduated in medicine and had been treating patients for some time; his practice was already advanced when an epidemic broke out in the capital; Dr. Mendonça invented an elixir against the disease; and so excellent was the elixir that the author earned a good couple of contos de réis. Now he practiced medicine as an amateur. He had enough for himself and his family. The family consisted of the animals mentioned above.
On the memorable night when Miss Dollar went astray, Mendonça was on his way home when he met the runaway in Rocio. The little dog accompanied him and, noticing that she was an animal with no visible owner, he took her with him to the Cajueiros.
As soon as he entered the house, he carefully examined the little dog, Miss Dollar was a real treat; she had the slender, graceful forms of her noble breed; her velvety brown eyes seemed to express the most complete happiness in this world, so happy and serene were they. Mendonça gazed at her and examined her thoroughly. He read the name on the padlock that closed the collar, and was finally convinced that the little dog was a great pet for whoever owned her.
“If the owner doesn't turn up, she'll stay with me," he said, handing Miss Dollar over to the boy in charge of the dogs.
The boy tried to feed Miss Dollar, while Mendonça planned a good future for the new guest, whose family was to live on in the house.
Mendonça's plan lasted as long as dreams last: the space of one night. The next day, reading the newspapers, he saw the advertisement transcribed above, promising two hundred thousand réis to whoever handed over the runaway dog. His passion for dogs gave him a measure of the pain that Miss Dollar's owner must have suffered, since he even offered two hundred thousand réis as a reward to anyone who presented the greyhound. As a result, he decided to give her back, with great sorrow in his heart. He hesitated for a few moments, but in the end the feelings of probity and compassion that were the hallmark of that soul won out. And, as it was hard for him to say goodbye to the animal, which was still new in the house, he decided to take it himself, and prepared himself for this purpose. He had lunch, and after making sure that Miss Dollar had done the same thing, they both left the house in the direction of Matacavalos.
At that time, the Baron of Amazonas had not yet saved the independence of the Platine republics through the victory of Riachuelo, the name with which the town council later christened Rua de Mata-cavalos. The traditional name of the street, which didn't really mean anything, remained in force.
The house with the number indicated in the advertisement was beautiful in appearance and indicated a certain wealth in the possessions of those who lived there. Even before Mendonça clapped his hands in the hallway, Miss Dollar, recognizing her homeland, started jumping up and down with happy, guttural sounds that, if there were any literature among dogs, must have been a hymn of thanksgiving.
A boy came to find out who was there; Mendonça said he had come to return the runaway greyhound. The boy's face expanded and he ran to announce the good news. Miss Dollar, taking advantage of a crack, rushed up the stairs. Mendonça was about to go downstairs, having completed his task, when the boy came back and told him to go upstairs and into the living room.
There was no one in the room. Some people who have elegantly arranged rooms usually leave time for visitors to admire them before they come to greet them. It's possible that this was the custom of the owners of the house, but this time they didn't think anything of it, because as soon as the doctor entered the hallway, an old woman with Miss Dollar in her arms and joy on her face emerged from the other side.
“Please have the goodness to sit down," she said, assigning Mendonça a chair.
“I won't be long," said the doctor, sitting down. “I've come to bring you the little dog that's been with me since yesterday...”
“You can't imagine how much trouble Miss Dollar's absence has caused in the house...”
“I can imagine, ma'am; I'm a dog lover myself, and if I were missing one, I'd feel it deeply. Your Miss Dollar...”
“Excuse me!" interrupted the old woman, "not mine; Miss Dollar isn't mine, she's my niece's.”
“Ah!”
“She's coming.”
Mendonça got up just as the niece in question entered the room. She was about twenty-eight years old, in the full bloom of her beauty, one of those women who herald late and imposing old age. Her dark silk dress gave a unique accent to the immensely white color of her skin. The dress was flouncy, which added to the majesty of her figure and stature. The bodice of the dress covered her entire neck, but beneath the silk you could see a beautiful marble torso modeled after a divine sculptor. Her brown, naturally wavy hair was styled with that homely simplicity which is the best of all known fashions; it gracefully adorned her forehead like a crown donated by nature. The extreme whiteness of her skin didn't have the slightest hint of pink to give it harmony and contrast. Her mouth was small and had a certain imperious expression. But the great distinction of that face, the thing that most caught the eye, were the eyes; imagine two emeralds swimming in milk.
Mendonça had never seen green eyes in his entire life; he had been told that green eyes existed, he knew by heart some famous verses by Gonçalves Dias; but until then, green eyes were to him the same thing as the phoenix of the ancients. One day, talking to some friends about this, he said that if he ever met a pair of green eyes he would run away from them in terror.
“Why?” asked one of the astonished bystanders.
“The color green is the color of the sea,” Mendonça replied; “I avoid the storms of one; I'll avoid the storms of the others.”
I'll leave it up to the reader to discover Mendonça's uniqueness, which is precious in Molière's sense.
III
Mendonça greeted the newcomer respectfully, and with a gesture, she invited him to sit down again.
“I am infinitely grateful to you for giving me back this poor animal, which I hold in great esteem," said Margarida, sitting down.
“And I thank God for having found it; it could have fallen into hands that wouldn't have returned it.”
Margaret made a gesture to Miss Dollar, and the little dog, jumping out of the old woman's lap, went to Margaret; she raised her front paws and put them on her knees; Margaret and Miss Dollar exchanged a long look of affection. During this time, one of the girl's hands was playing with one of the greyhound's ears, allowing Mendonça to admire her beautiful fingers armed with very sharp nails.
But although Mendonça was delighted to be there, he noticed that his delay was strange and humiliating. He seemed to be waiting for his reward. In order to escape this unflattering interpretation, he sacrificed the pleasure of the conversation and the contemplation of the girl:
“My mission is accomplished...”
“But...” interrupted the old woman.
Mendonça understood the threat of the old woman's interruption.
“The joy, he said, that I have brought back to this house is the greatest reward I could have hoped for. Now I ask you to excuse me...
The two ladies understood Mendonça's intention; the girl repaid his courtesy with a smile; and the old woman, gathering as much strength as she had left in her whole body, shook the boy's hand in friendship.
Mendonça left impressed by the interesting Margarida. In addition to her beauty, which was first-rate, he noticed a certain sad severity in her gaze and manner. If this was the girl's character, she was a good match for the doctor; if it was the result of some episode in her life, it was a page from the novel that had to be deciphered by skillful eyes. In fact, the only fault Mendonça found with her was the color of her eyes, not because they were ugly, but because he was wary of green eyes. The prejudice, it must be said, was more literary than anything else; Mendonça clung to a phrase he had once uttered, as quoted above, and it was the phrase that gave him the prejudice. Don't accuse me out of hand; Mendonça was an intelligent man, educated and endowed with common sense; he also had a great tendency towards romantic affections; but despite this, there was our Achilles' heel. He was a man like the others, there are other Achilles out there who are a huge heel from head to toe. That was Mendonça's vulnerable point; the love of a phrase was capable of violating his affections; he sacrificed a situation to a rounded period.
Referring to the galga episode and the interview with Margarida with a friend, Mendonça said that he might like her if she didn't have green eyes. His friend laughed with a certain air of sarcasm.
“But, doctor," he told him, "I don't understand that prevention; I've even heard it said that green eyes are usually harbingers of a good soul. Besides, the color of one's eyes is of no importance, it's the expression that matters. They can be as blue as the sky and as perfidious as the sea.
This anonymous friend's observation had the advantage of being just as poetic as Mendonça's. That's why it profoundly shook the anonymous man. That's why it had a profound effect on the doctor's mood. He wasn't left like Buridan's donkey between a saddle of water and a quarter of barley; the donkey would have hesitated, Mendonça didn't hesitate. The lesson of the casuist Sánchez immediately came to mind, and of the two opinions he took the one that seemed likely.
Some serious reader will find this circumstance of green eyes and this controversy over their probable quality puerile. It will prove that he has little experience of the world. Picturesque almanacs cite to satiety a thousand eccentricities and faults of the great men whom humanity admires, both for their knowledge of letters and for their bravery in arms; and we never cease to admire those same men. The reader doesn't want to make an exception just to fit our doctor into it. Let's accept him with his ridicule; who doesn't? Ridicule is a kind of ballast for the soul when it enters the sea of life; some make it all the way without any other kind of cargo.
To compensate for these weaknesses, I've already said that Mendonça had some unusual qualities. Adopting the opinion that seemed most likely to him, which was his friend's, Mendonça told himself that in Margarida's hands was perhaps the key to his future. He thought up a plan of happiness: a house in the wilderness, looking out to sea to the west, so that he could watch the sunset. Margarida and he, united by love and the Church, would drink the whole cup of heavenly happiness there, drop by drop. Mendonça's dream contained other particularities that it would be idle to mention here. Mendonça thought about it for a few days; he even passed through Mata-cavalos a few times, but he was so unhappy that he never saw Margarida or his aunt; in the end, he gave up the enterprise and returned to the dogs.
The collection of dogs was a veritable gallery of illustrious men. The most esteemed of them was called Diogenes; there was a greyhound that went by the name of Caesar; a water dog called Nelson; Cornelia was called a ratty little dog, and Caligula was a huge dog, a veritable effigy of the great monster that Roman society had produced. When he found himself among all these people, illustrious by different titles, Mendonça said that he was going down in history; that's how he forgot about the rest of the world.
IV
Mendonça was once standing outside the Carceller, where he had just had an ice cream in the company of a friend of his, when he saw a car pass by and two ladies in it who seemed to him to be the ladies of Mata-cavalos. Mendonça made a startled movement that didn't escape his friend.
“What was it?”
“Nothing;” I thought I knew those ladies. “Did you see them, Andrade?”
“No.”
The car had entered Rua do Ouvidor; the two went up the same street. Just above Rua da Quitanda, the car stopped outside a store, and the ladies got out and went in. Mendonça didn't see them get out, but he saw the car and suspected it was the same one. He hurried on without saying anything to Andrade, who did the same, moved by that natural curiosity a man feels when he perceives some hidden secret.
A few moments later they were at the store door; Mendonça saw that they were the two ladies from Mata-cavalos. He dashed in, looking like he was going to buy something, and approached the ladies. The first to meet him was his aunt. Mendonça greeted them respectfully. They received his greeting with affability. Next to Margarida was Miss Dollar, who, because of that admirable sense of smell that nature has bestowed on dogs and the courtiers of fortune, jumped for joy as soon as she saw Mendonça, and even touched his stomach with her front paws.
“It seems that Miss Dollar had fond memories of you,” said D. Antonia (that was Margarida's aunt's name).
“I think so," replied Mendonça, playing with the greyhound and looking at Margarida.
Just then Andrade came in.
“I've only just recognized you," he said, addressing the ladies.
Andrade shook hands with the two ladies, or rather he shook Antônia's hand and Margarida's fingers.
Mendonça hadn't counted on this incident, and he was glad that it gave him the means to make his superficial relations with the family more intimate.
“It would be good,” he said to Andrade, if you introduced me to these ladies.
“Don't you know them? Andrade asked in amazement.
“You know us without knowing us,” smiled the old aunt; “for the moment it was Miss Dollar who introduced him.”
Antonia told Andrade about the loss and finding of the little dog.
“Well, in that case,” Andrade replied, “I'll introduce you now.”
After the official presentation, the clerk brought Margarida the items she had bought, and the two ladies said goodbye to the boys, asking them to come and see them.
I haven't quoted any of Margarida's words in the conversation above, because, in truth, she only said two words to each of the boys.
“Have a good time,” she said, giving them the tips of her fingers and leaving to get into the car.
When they were alone, the two boys also left and walked up Rua do Ouvidor, both silent. Mendonça was thinking of Margarida; Andrade was thinking of ways to get into Mendonça's confidence. Vanity has a thousand ways of manifesting itself, like the fabulous Proteus. Andrade's vanity was to be the confidant of others; it seemed to him that he could get from trust what he could only get from indiscretion. It wasn't difficult for him to catch Mendonça's secret; before he reached the corner of Rua dos Ourives, Andrade already knew everything.
“You understand now," said Mendonça, "that I need to go to her house; I need to see her; I want to see if I can...”
Mendonça stopped.
“Finish it!” said Andrade; “if you can be loved. Why not? But I'm telling you now that it won't be easy.”
“Why not?”
“Margarida has rejected five marriages.”
“Of course she didn't love her suitors,” said Mendonça with the air of a geometrician finding a solution.
“She loved the first one passionately,” Andrade replied, and was not indifferent to the last.
“There was naturally intrigue.”
“No, there wasn't either. Are you surprised? That's what happens to me. She's a strange girl. If you think you have the strength to be the Columbus of that world, set sail with the armada; but beware of the revolt of passions, which are the fierce sailors of these voyages of discovery.”
Excited by this allusion, which was historical in the form of an allegory, Andrade looked at Mendonça, who, this time left to the girl's thoughts, didn't heed his friend's words. Andrade contented himself with his own suffrage, and smiled with the same air of satisfaction that a poet must have when writing the last line of a poem.
V
A few days later, Andrade and Mendonça went to Margarida's house and spent half an hour there in ceremonious conversation. The visits were repeated, but they were more frequent on the part of Mendonça than Andrade. D. Antônia showed herself to be more familiar than Margarida; only after a while did Margarida come down from the Olympus of silence in which she usually enclosed herself.
It was hard not to. Mendonça, although not given to socializing, was a gentleman fit to entertain two ladies who seemed mortally bored. The doctor knew the piano and played it pleasantly; his conversation was lively; he knew a thousand things that usually entertain ladies when they don't like or can't enter the high ground of art, history and philosophy. It wasn't difficult for the boy to become close to the family.
After the first few visits, Mendonça learned from Andrade that Margarida was a widow. Mendonça didn't hold back his gesture of astonishment.
“But you spoke in such a way that you seemed to be dealing with an unmarried woman," he said to his friend.
“It's true that I didn't explain myself well; the marriages that were refused were all proposed after her widowhood.”
“How long have you been a widow?”
“Three years.”
“Everything can be explained,” said Mendonça after some silence; she wants to stay faithful to the grave; she's an Artemis of the century.
Andrade was skeptical about Artemisas; he smiled at his friend's remark and, when he insisted, replied:
“But if I've already told you that she loved her first suitor passionately and wasn't indifferent to her last.”
“Then I don't understand.”
“Neither do I.”
From that moment on, Mendonça tried to court the widow assiduously; Margarida received Mendonça's first glances with an air of such supreme disdain that the young man was on the verge of abandoning the enterprise; but the widow, while seeming to refuse love, did not refuse him esteem, and treated him with the greatest gentleness in the world whenever he looked at her like everyone else.
Love repelled is love multiplied. Every repulsion from Margarida increased Mendonça's passion. Neither the ferocious Caligula nor the elegant Julius Caesar were worthy of his attention. Mendonça's two slaves began to notice the profound difference between today's habits and those of another time. They immediately assumed that something was bothering him. They were convinced of this when Mendonça once entered the house and hit Cornelia on the muzzle with the tip of his boot, just as this interesting little dog, the mother of two Gracos rateiros, was celebrating the doctor's arrival.
Andrade was not insensitive to his friend's suffering and tried to console him. All consolation in these cases is as desirable as it is useless; Mendonça listened to Andrade's words and confided all his sorrows to him. Andrade reminded Mendonça of an excellent way to stop the passion: he had to leave the house. Mendonça responded by quoting La Rochefoucauld:
"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, like the wind extinguishes candles and stokes fires."
The quotation had the merit of covering Andrade's mouth, who believed as much in constancy as in Artemisas, but who didn't want to contradict the moralist's authority or Mendonça's resolution.
VI
Three months passed. Mendonça's court never took a step forward, but his widow never stopped being kind to him. This was what mainly kept the doctor at the insensitive widow's feet; he never gave up hope of winning her.
Some conspicuous reader would have wished that Mendonça hadn't been so frequent in the house of a lady exposed to the slander of the world. The doctor thought about it and consoled his conscience with the presence of an individual, hitherto unnamed because of his nullity, who was none other than Mrs. Antonia's son and the apple of her eye. The boy's name was Jorge, and he spent two hundred thousand réis a month without earning it, thanks to his mother's long-suffering. He frequented the hairdressers', where he spent more time than a decadent Roman at the hands of her Latin servants. She never missed an important role at the Alcazar; she rode good horses and enriched the pockets of some famous ladies and various obscure parasites with extraordinary expenses. He wore letter E gloves and number 36 boots, two qualities that he threw in the faces of all his friends who didn't go below number 40 and letter H. The presence of this gentle child, Mendonça thought, saved the situation. Mendonça wanted to give this satisfaction to the world, that is, to the opinion of the city's idlers. But was that enough to shut the idlers' mouths?
Margarida seemed as indifferent to the world's interpretations as she was to the boy's attendance. Was she as indifferent to everything else in the world? No; she loved her mother, had a fondness for Miss Dollar, liked good music, and read novels. She dressed well, without being a fashionista; she didn't waltz; at most she danced a quadrille at the soirees she was invited to. She didn't talk much, but she expressed herself well. Her gesture was graceful and lively, but without pretension or facetiousness.
When Mendonça appeared there, Margarida welcomed him with visible delight. The doctor was always deluded, even though he was used to such manifestations. Indeed, Margarida enjoyed the boy's presence immensely, but she didn't seem to attach any importance to it that would flatter his heart. She liked to see him as one likes to see a beautiful day, without falling in love with the sun.
It wasn't possible to suffer the position the doctor was in for long. One evening, with an effort he wouldn't have thought himself capable of before, Mendonça asked Margarida this indiscreet question:
“Were you happy with your husband?”
Margarida frowned in astonishment and stared into the doctor's eyes, which seemed to continue the question mutely.
“I was," she said after a few moments.”
Mendonça didn't say a word; he hadn't expected that answer. He trusted too much in the intimacy that reigned between them, and he wanted to find out the cause of the widow's insensitivity. The calculation failed; Margarida became serious for a while; the arrival of Mrs. Antônia saved Mendonça a left situation. Shortly afterwards Margarida was back in good spirits, and the conversation became as lively and intimate as ever. The arrival of Jorge took the conversation to greater heights; D. Antônia, with her mother's eyes and ears, thought her son was the funniest boy in the world; but the truth was that there was no more frivolous spirit in all of Christendom. The mother laughed at everything her son said; the son alone filled the conversation with anecdotes and Alcazar sayings and sestros. Mendonça saw all these features of the boy and put up with him with evangelical resignation.
Jorge's entrance, enlivening the conversation, sped up the hours; at ten o'clock the doctor left, accompanied by Mrs. Antônia's son, who was going to supper. Mendonça refused Jorge's invitation and said goodbye to him in Rua do Conde, on the corner of Rua do Lavradio.
That same evening, Mendonça decided to strike a decisive blow; he decided to write a letter to Margarida. It was foolhardy for anyone who knew the widow's character, but with the precedents already mentioned, it was madness. However, the doctor didn't hesitate to use the letter, trusting that he would say things much better on paper than by word of mouth. The letter was written with feverish impatience; the next day, just after lunch, Mendonça slipped the letter into a volume of George Sand and sent it to Margarida.
The widow tore off the paper wrapping and put the book on the living room table; half an hour later she returned and picked it up to read. As soon as she opened it, the letter fell at her feet. He opened it and read the following:
Whatever the cause of your evasion, I respect it, I do not protest against it. But if I can't rebel, can't I complain? She must have understood my love, just as I have understood her indifference; but however great that indifference may be, it is far from matching the deep and imperious love that took possession of my heart when I was farthest from these passions of my early years. I won't tell you about the insomnia and the tears, the hopes and the disappointments, the sad pages of this book that fate puts in the hands of man so that two souls can read it. She doesn't care.
I don't dare question her about the avoidance she has shown towards me, but why does this avoidance extend to so many others? In the age of fertile passions, adorned by heaven with a rare beauty, why do you want to hide from the world and defraud nature and the heart of their indisputable rights? Forgive the audacity of the question; I find myself facing an enigma that my heart would like to decipher. I sometimes think that some great pain is tormenting her, and I would like to be the doctor of her heart; I would like, I confess, to restore some lost illusion.
There seems to be no offense in this ambition.
If, however, this avoidance simply denotes a feeling of legitimate pride, forgive me if I dared to write to you when your eyes expressly forbade it. Tear up the letter that can neither be a souvenir nor a weapon.
The letter was all reflection; the cold, measured phrase did not express the fire of feeling. However, the reader will not have missed the sincerity and simplicity with which Mendonça asked for an explanation that Margarida probably couldn't give.
When Mendonça told Andrade that he had written to Margarida, the doctor's friend burst out laughing.
“Did I do it wrong?” asked Mendonça.
“You've ruined everything. The other suitors also started by letter; it was the death certificate of love.”
“Patience, if the same thing happens,” said Mendonça, raising his shoulders with apparent indifference; “but I wish you weren't always talking about suitors; I'm not a suitor in that sense.”
“Wouldn't you like to marry her?”
“Undoubtedly, if it were possible,” replied Mendonça.
“Because that's exactly what the others wanted; you would marry her and take possession of the property that she had shared, which amounted to well over a hundred contos. My rich man, if I mention suitors, it's not because I offend you, because one of the four suitors who was dismissed was me.”
“You were?”
“That's true, but rest assured, I wasn't the first, not even the last.”
“Did you write?”
“Like the others; like them, I didn't get a reply; that is, I got one: he returned my letter. So, since you've written to him, wait for the rest; you'll see if what I tell you is accurate or not. You're lost, Mendonça; you've done very badly.”
Andrade had this characteristic feature of not omitting any of the dark colors of a situation, on the pretext that friends are owed the truth. Having drawn the picture, he said goodbye to Mendonça and went on his way.
Mendonça went home, where he spent the night.
VII
Andrade was wrong; the widow had replied to the doctor's letter. Her letter was limited to this:
I forgive you everything; I won't forgive you if you write to me again. My avoidance has no cause; it's a matter of temperament.
