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- Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Alienist and Other Stories", Machado de Assis turns everyday life into an enigma and irony into a lens. The stories gathered here reveal characters shaped by quiet ambitions, persistent illusions, and truths that slip in through the cracks. With subtle humor and a gaze that loses neither tenderness nor sharpness, the author dismantles habits, exposes contradictions, and invites the reader to notice the uncanny hidden within ordinary scenes. The result is a collection of narratives that resonates far beyond its own time — incisive, human, and unsettlingly close to us. The stories included in this volume are: The Alienist, The Medallion Theory, The Turkish Slipper, In the Ark, Mrs. Benedita, The Bonze's Secret, The Ring of Polycrates, The Loan, The Most Serene Republic, The Mirror, A Visit from Alcibiades, Final Request.
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Seitenzahl: 266
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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The Alienist and Other Stories
Machado de Assis
SYNOPSIS
In “The Alienist and Other Stories”, Machado de Assis turns everyday life into an enigma and irony into a lens. The stories gathered here reveal characters shaped by quiet ambitions, persistent illusions, and truths that slip in through the cracks. With subtle humor and a gaze that loses neither tenderness nor sharpness, the author dismantles habits, exposes contradictions, and invites the reader to notice the uncanny hidden within ordinary scenes.
The result is a collection of narratives that resonates far beyond its own time — incisive, human, and unsettlingly close to us.
The stories included in this volume are: The Alienist, The Medallion Theory, The Turkish Slipper, In the Ark, Mrs. Benedita, The Bonze’s Secret, The Ring of Polycrates, The Loan, The Most Serene Republic, The Mirror, A Visit from Alcibiades, Final Request.
Keywords
Irony, Social critique, Everyday life
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.
The Alienist
Chapter I:How Itaguaí got a house of madmen
The chronicles of the village of Itaguaí say that in ancient times there lived a certain doctor, Dr. Simão Bacamarte, son of the local nobility and the greatest doctor in Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. He had studied in Coimbra and Padua. At the age of thirty-four, he returned to Brazil, as the king could not persuade him to remain in Coimbra to run the university or in Lisbon to conduct the affairs of the monarchy. “Science,” he said to His Majesty, “is my only occupation; Itaguaí is my universe.”
Having said that, he settled in Itaguaí and devoted himself body and soul to the study of science, alternating between healing and reading, and demonstrating theorems with poultices. At the age of forty, he married Mrs. Evarista da Costa e Mascarenhas, a twenty-five-year-old widow of a magistrate, who was neither pretty nor pleasant. One of his uncles, a hunter of pacas before the Eternal, and no less frank, was surprised at such a choice and told him so. Simão Bacamarte explained to him that Mrs. Evarista had first-rate physiological and anatomical conditions, digested easily, slept regularly, had a good pulse, and excellent eyesight; she was thus able to give him robust, healthy, and intelligent children. If, in addition to these gifts—the only ones worthy of a wise man's concern—Mrs. Evarista was not well-featured, far from pitying her, he thanked God, for he did not run the risk of neglecting the interests of science in the exclusive, petty, and vulgar contemplation of his spouse.
Mrs. Evarista disappointed Dr. Bacamarte's hopes; she gave him no robust or even cheerful children. The natural disposition of science is long-suffering; our doctor waited three years, then four, then five. At the end of that time, he made a thorough study of the matter, reread all the Arab and other writers he had brought to Itaguaí, sent inquiries to Italian and German universities, and finally advised his wife to follow a special diet. The illustrious lady, nourished exclusively on the fine pork of Itaguaí, did not heed her husband's admonitions; and to her resistance—explicable but unspeakable—we owe the total extinction of the Bacamarte dynasty.
But science has the ineffable gift of healing all sorrows; our doctor immersed himself entirely in the study and practice of medicine. It was then that one of its corners caught his attention in particular—the psychic corner, the examination of brain pathology. There was not a single authority in the colony, or even in the kingdom, on this little-explored, or almost unexplored, subject.
Simão Bacamarte understood that Portuguese science, and particularly Brazilian science, could be covered with “imperishable laurels,” an expression he used himself, but in a moment of domestic intimacy; outwardly he was modest, as befits those who are knowledgeable. “The health of the soul,” he exclaimed, “is the most worthy occupation of the doctor.”
“Of the true doctor,” added Crispim Soares, the village apothecary and one of his friends and dinner guests.
The council of Itaguaí, among other sins for which it is accused by chroniclers, had that of not caring for the insane. Thus, every raving madman was locked in a room in his own house and, not cured, but neglected, until death deprived him of the benefit of life; the meek wandered freely through the streets. Simão Bacamarte immediately understood that such a bad custom had to be reformed; he asked the City Council for permission to shelter and treat all the madmen of Itaguaí and the other towns and cities in the building he was going to construct, in exchange for a stipend that the City Council would give him when the family of the patient was unable to do so. The proposal aroused the curiosity of the entire village and met with great resistance, for it is true that absurd or even evil habits are difficult to eradicate. The idea of putting the insane in the same house, living together, seemed in itself a symptom of insanity, and there were those who insinuated this to the doctor's own wife.
“Look, Mrs. Evarista,” said Father Lopes, the local vicar, “see if your husband can take a trip to Rio de Janeiro. Studying all the time is not good; it clouds the judgment.”
Mrs. Evarista was terrified. She went to her husband and told him that she had a desire, one in particular: to go to Rio de Janeiro and eat everything that seemed appropriate for a certain purpose. But that great man, with the rare sagacity that distinguished him, saw through his wife's intention and replied with a smile that she should not be afraid. From there he went to the City Council, where the councilors were debating the proposal, and defended it with such eloquence that the majority decided to authorize what he had asked for, voting at the same time for a tax to subsidize the treatment, lodging, and maintenance of the poor insane. The source of the tax was not easy to find; everything was taxed in Itaguaí. After lengthy studies, it was decided to allow the use of two plumes on horses used in funerals. Anyone who wanted to feather the horses of a hearse would pay two pennies to the City Council, repeating this amount as many times as the hours elapsed between the time of death and the last blessing at the grave.
The clerk got lost in the arithmetic calculations of the possible income from the new tax; and one of the councilors, who did not believe in the doctor's enterprise, asked that the clerk be relieved of his useless work. “The calculations are not accurate,” he said, "because Dr. Bacamarte will not get anything. Who has seen all the madmen put in the same house?
The dignified magistrate was mistaken; the doctor had arranged everything. Once he had obtained the license, he immediately began to build the house. It was on Rua Nova, the most beautiful street in Itaguaí at that time, with fifty windows on each side, a courtyard in the center, and numerous cubicles for guests. As he was a great Arabist, he found in the Koran that Muhammad declares madmen venerable, on the grounds that Allah takes away their judgment so that they do not sin. He found the idea beautiful and profound, and had it engraved on the front of the house; but, as he was afraid of the vicar, and by extension the bishop, he attributed the thought to Benedict VIII, deserving with this otherwise pious fraud that Father Lopes tell him, at lunch, the life of that eminent pontiff.
The Green House was the name given to the asylum, in reference to the color of the windows, which appeared green for the first time in Itaguaí. It was inaugurated with great pomp; people flocked from all the nearby towns and villages, and even from distant ones, and from the city of Rio de Janeiro itself, to attend the ceremonies, which lasted seven days. Many lunatics had already been admitted, and their relatives had the opportunity to see the paternal affection and Christian charity with which they were to be treated. Mrs. Evarista, overjoyed with her husband's glory, dressed luxuriously, covered herself with jewels, flowers, and silks. She was a true queen in those memorable days; no one failed to visit her two or three times, despite the modest and reserved customs of the century, and they not only courted her but also praised her; for, — and this fact is a highly honorable document for the society of the time, — for they saw in her the happy wife of a man of high spirit, of an illustrious man, and if they envied her, it was the holy and noble envy of admirers.
After seven days, the public festivities came to an end; Itaguaí finally had a house of Orates.
Chapter II:Torrent of madmen
Three days later, in an intimate conversation with the apothecary Crispim Soares, the alienist revealed the mystery of his heart.
"Charity, Mr. Soares, certainly enters into my conduct, but it enters as a seasoning, like the salt of things, which is how I interpret St. Paul's saying to the Corinthians: 'If I know all that can be known, and have not charity, I am nothing. The main thing in my work at the Green House is to study madness in depth, its various degrees, classify cases, and finally discover the cause of the phenomenon and the universal remedy. This is the mystery of my heart. I believe that in this way I am doing a good service to humanity.
“An excellent service,” corrected the apothecary.
“Without this asylum,” continued the alienist, “I could do little; but it gives me a much wider field for my studies.”
“Much wider,” added the other.
And they were right. From all the neighboring towns and villages, the insane flocked to the Green House. They were furious, they were meek, they were monomaniacs, they were the whole family of the spiritually disinherited. After four months, the Green House was a village. The first cubicles were not enough; a gallery of thirty-seven more was added. Father Lopes confessed that he had never imagined there were so many madmen in the world, and even less the inexplicable nature of some cases. One, for example, a dull and villainous boy, who every day after lunch regularly gave an academic speech, adorned with tropes, antitheses, and apostrophes, with his embroidery of Greek and Latin, and his flourishes of Cicero, Apuleius, and Tertullian. The vicar could not believe it. What! A boy he had seen three months earlier playing peteca in the street!
“I don't say it isn't so,” replied the alienist, “but the truth is what Your Reverence sees. This happens every day.”
“As for me,” replied the vicar, “it can only be explained by the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, as the Scriptures tell us; probably, since languages were confused in ancient times, it is easy to mix them up now, as long as reason does not work...”
“That may indeed be the divine explanation of the phenomenon,” agreed the alienist, after reflecting for a moment, “but it is not impossible that there is also some human reason, purely scientific, and that is what I am dealing with...”
“Go on, then, and I am anxious to hear it. Really!”
There were three or four madmen in love, but only two were frightening because of the strangeness of their delirium. The first, a Falcão, a young man of twenty-five, supposed himself to be the morning star, spread his arms and legs wide to give them the appearance of rays, and remained thus for hours on end, asking if the sun had risen so that he could retire. The other walked constantly, always, always, around the rooms or the courtyard, along the corridors, looking for the end of the world. He was a wretch whose wife had left him for a young fool. As soon as he discovered their escape, he armed himself with a pistol and set off in pursuit; he found them two hours later, near a pond, and killed them both with the utmost cruelty.
His jealousy was satisfied, but the avenger was mad. And so began his eagerness to go to the end of the world in search of the fugitives.
There were notable examples of this delusion of grandeur. The most notable was a poor devil, the son of a peddler, who narrated to the walls (because he never looked at anyone) his entire genealogy, which was as follows:
“God begot an egg, the egg begot the sword, the sword begot David, David begot the purple, the purple begot the duke, the duke begot the marquis, the marquis begot the count, who is me.”
He would bang his forehead, snap his fingers, and repeat five or six times in a row:
“God begot an egg, the egg, etc.”
Another of the same kind was a clerk who sold himself as the king's butler; another was a cattle rancher from Minas Gerais whose mania was to distribute cattle to everyone, giving three hundred heads to one, six hundred to another, twelve hundred to another, and so on and so forth. I will not mention cases of religious monomania; I will only cite one individual who, calling himself John of God, claimed to be the god John, promising the kingdom of heaven to those who worshipped him and the torments of hell to the others; and after him, the graduate Garcia, who said nothing, because he imagined that on the day he uttered a single word, all the stars would fall from the sky and burn the earth, such was the power he had received from God.
This he wrote on the paper that the alienist had given him, less out of charity than out of scientific interest.
In truth, the alienist's patience was even more extraordinary than all the manias housed in the Green House; it was nothing short of astonishing. Simão Bacamarte began by organizing an administrative staff; and, accepting this idea from the apothecary Crispim Soares, he also accepted two of his nephews, whom he entrusted with the execution of a set of rules he had drawn up, approved by the City Council, for the distribution of food and clothing, as well as for writing, etc. It was the best he could do, in order to devote himself solely to his craft.
“The Green House,” he said to the vicar, “is now a kind of world, in which there is temporal government and spiritual government.” And Father Lopes laughed at this pious exchange, adding, with the sole purpose of making a joke: “Let it be, let it be, I'll have you reported to the pope.”
Once relieved of his administrative duties, the alienist proceeded to a vast classification of his patients. He divided them first into two main classes: the furious and the meek; from there he moved on to subclasses, monomanias, delusions, various hallucinations. This done, he began a thorough and continuous study; he analyzed the habits of each madman, the hours of access, the aversions, their sympathies, words, gestures, and tendencies; he inquired into the lives of the patients, their professions, customs, circumstances of their morbid revelation, accidents in childhood and youth, other illnesses, family history, debauchery—in short, he did everything that the most astute magistrate would do. And every day he noted a new observation, an interesting discovery, an extraordinary phenomenon. At the same time, he studied the best regimen, medicinal substances, curative and palliative means, not only those that came from his beloved Arabs, but also those he discovered himself, through sagacity and patience. Now, all this work took up most of his time. He hardly slept or ate; and even when he ate, it was as if he were working, because he was either questioning an ancient text or pondering a question, and he often went from one end of the dinner table to the other without saying a single word to Mrs. Evarista.
Chapter III:God knows what he does!
After two months, the illustrious lady found herself the most unfortunate of women; she fell into a deep melancholy, became pale and thin, ate little, and sighed at every turn. She did not dare to complain or reproach him, because she respected him as her husband and lord, but she suffered in silence and wasted away before everyone's eyes.
One day at dinner, when her husband asked her what was wrong, she replied sadly that nothing was wrong; then she dared a little more and went so far as to say that she considered herself as much a widow as before. And she added: “Who would have thought that a handful of lunatics...”
She did not finish her sentence; or rather, she finished it by raising her eyes to the ceiling—her eyes, which were her most insinuating feature—black, large, washed with a moist light, like those of the dawn. As for her gesture, it was the same one she had used on the day Simão Bacamarte asked for her hand in marriage. The chronicles do not say whether Mrs. Evarista brandished that weapon with the perverse intention of beheading science once and for all, or at least cutting off its hands; but the conjecture is plausible. In any case, the alienist did not attribute any other intention to her. And the great man was not irritated, nor was he even dismayed. The metal of his eyes remained the same metal, hard, smooth, eternal, not even the slightest wrinkle breaking the surface of his forehead, which was as still as the waters of Botafogo. Perhaps a smile crossed his lips, through which filtered this word, soft as the oil of the Song of Solomon:
“I consent to your going for a walk in Rio de Janeiro.”
Mrs. Evarista felt the ground disappear beneath her feet. She had never seen Rio de Janeiro, which, even though it was not even a pale shadow of what it is today, was still something more than Itaguaí. Seeing Rio de Janeiro, for her, was equivalent to the dream of a captive Hebrew. Now, especially since her husband had settled permanently in that inland town, she had lost all hope of breathing the air of our fine city; and now, of all times, he was inviting her to fulfill her childhood and young woman's dreams. Mrs. Evarista could not hide her delight at such a proposal. Simão Bacamarte took her hand and smiled—a smile that was as philosophical as it was conjugal, in which the following thought seemed to be expressed: “There is no sure remedy for the pains of the soul; this lady is wasting away because she thinks I do not love her; I will give her Rio de Janeiro, and she will be consoled.” And because he was a studious man, he took note of the observation.
But a dart pierced Mrs. Evarista's heart. She restrained herself, however, and merely told her husband that if he did not go, she would not go either, because she would not travel alone on the roads.
“You will go with your aunt,” replied the alienist.
It should be noted that Mrs. Evarista had thought of this herself, but she did not want to ask or even hint at it, firstly because it would impose a great expense on her husband, and secondly because it was better, more methodical, and more rational for the proposal to come from him.
“Oh, but the money it will cost!” sighed Mrs. Evarista without conviction.
“What does it matter? We've earned a lot,” said her husband. “Just yesterday the clerk gave me the accounts. Would you like to see?”
And he took her to the books. Mrs. Evarista was dazzled. It was a Milky Way of numbers. And then he took her to the chests where the money was kept.
My God! There were piles of gold, thousands upon thousands of cruzados, doubloons upon doubloons; it was opulence.
While she devoured the gold with her dark eyes, the alienist stared at her and whispered in her ear with the most perfidious of allusions:
“Who would have thought that a handful lunatics...”
Mrs. Evarista understood, smiled, and replied with great resignation:
“God knows what He is doing!”
Three months later, the journey took place. Mrs. Evarista, her aunt, the apothecary's wife, a nephew of the latter, a priest whom the alienist had met in Lisbon and who happened to be in Itaguaí, five or six pages, four maids, such was the entourage that the population saw leaving there one morning in May. The farewells were sad for everyone except the alienist. Although Mrs. Evarista's tears were abundant and sincere, they did not shake him. A man of science, and only of science, nothing outside science could disturb him; and if anything worried him at that moment, if he cast a restless, police-like glance at the crowd, it was nothing more than the idea that some madman might be mixed in with the sane people.
“Goodbye!” sobbed the ladies and the apothecary at last.
And the procession departed. Crispim Soares, on returning home, had his eyes fixed between the ears of the roan beast he was riding; Simão Bacamarte stretched his eyes toward the horizon ahead, leaving the horse to take responsibility for the return journey. A vivid image of genius and the common people! One gazes at the present, with all its tears and longings, the other devours the future with all its dawns.
Chapter IV:A new theory
While Mrs. Evarista, in tears, was making her way to Rio de Janeiro, Simão Bacamarte was studying from all angles a certain bold and new idea, one that would broaden the foundations of psychology. All the time he had left over from his duties at the Green House was too little to walk the streets or go from house to house, talking to people about thirty thousand subjects and punctuating his words with a look that frightened even the most heroic.
One morning, three weeks later, while Crispim Soares was busy preparing a medicine, someone came to tell him that the alienist wanted to see him.
“It's important business, according to what he told me,” added the messenger.
Crispim turned pale. What important business could it be, if not some sad news from the entourage, and especially from his wife? Because this point must be clearly defined, since the chroniclers insist on it: Crispim loved his wife, and for thirty years they had never been apart for a single day. This explains the monologues he now uttered, which his servants often heard:
"Well done, who told you to agree to Cesária's trip? You sycophant, you vile sycophant! Just to flatter Dr. Bacamarte. Now hold on to your hat; hold on, you lackey, you weakling, you vile, miserable wretch. You say ‘amen’ to everything, don't you? There's your profit, you scoundrel!" And many other ugly names that a man should not say to others, let alone to himself. It is easy to imagine the effect of the message. As soon as he received it, he gave up the drugs and flew to the Green House.
Simão Bacamarte received him with the joy of a wise man, a joy buttoned up with caution to the neck.
“I am very happy,” he said.
“News of our people?” asked the apothecary with a trembling voice.
The alienist made a magnificent gesture and replied:
"It is something greater, it is a scientific experiment. I say experiment because I do not dare to assert my idea just yet; science is nothing else, Mr. Soares, but constant investigation. It is, therefore, an experiment, but an experiment that will change the face of the Earth. Madness, the object of my studies, has until now been a lost island in the ocean of reason; I am beginning to suspect that it is a continent.
He said this, and fell silent, to ponder the apothecary's astonishment. Then he explained his idea at length. In his view, insanity covered a vast area of the brain, and he developed this idea with a wealth of reasoning, texts, and examples. He found examples in history and in Itaguaí, but, being a rare spirit, he recognized the danger of citing all the cases from Itaguaí and took refuge in history. Thus, he pointed out with particularity some famous characters, Socrates, who had a familiar demon, Pascal, who saw an abyss on his left, Muhammad, Caracalla, Domitian, Caligula, etc., a string of cases and people, in which hateful entities and ridiculous entities were mixed together. And because the apothecary was amazed at such promiscuity, the alienist told him that it was all the same thing, and even added sententiously:
"Ferocity, Mr. Soares, is serious grotesqueness."
"Witty, very witty!" exclaimed Crispim Soares, raising his hands to the sky.
As for the idea of expanding the territory of madness, the apothecary found it extravagant; but modesty, the main adornment of his spirit, did not allow him to confess anything other than noble enthusiasm; he declared it sublime and true, and added that it was “a case for the rattle.” This expression has no equivalent in modern style. At that time, Itaguaí, which like the other villages, hamlets, and settlements of the colony, had no press, had two ways of spreading news: either by means of handwritten posters nailed to the door of the Town Hall and the parish church; or by means of the rattle.
This is how the latter was used. A man was hired for one or more days to walk the streets of the village with a rattle in his hand.
From time to time, he would strike the rattle, people would gather, and he would announce what he had to say—a remedy for colic, farmland for sale, a sonnet, a church donation, the best scissors in town, the most beautiful speech of the year, etc. The system had drawbacks for public peace, but it was maintained by the great energy with which it was publicized. For example, one of the councilors—the very one who had most opposed the creation of the Green House—enjoyed a reputation as a perfect trainer of snakes and monkeys, although he had never tamed a single one of these animals; but he was careful to make the rattle work every month. And the chronicles say that some people claimed to have seen rattlesnakes dancing on the councilman's chest; a perfectly false statement, but only due to absolute confidence in the system. True, true; not all institutions of the old regime deserved the contempt of our century.
"There is no better way to announce my idea than putting it into practice," replied the alienist to the apothecary's insinuation.
And the apothecary, not disagreeing significantly with this point of view, told him that yes, it was better to start with the execution.
"There will always be time to give it to the rattle," he concluded.
Simão Bacamarte reflected for a moment and said:
"Supposing the human spirit to be a vast shell, my goal, Mr. Soares, is to see if I can extract the pearl, which is reason; in other words, let us definitively demarcate the limits of reason and madness.
Reason is the perfect balance of all faculties; outside of that is insanity, insanity, and only insanity.
Vicar Lopes, to whom he entrusted his new theory, declared flatly that he did not understand it, that it was an absurd work, and, if it was not absurd, it was so colossal that it did not deserve to be put into practice.
“With the current definition, which is the definition of all times,” he added, "madness and reason are perfectly delimited. We know where one ends and the other begins. Why cross the fence?
A vague shadow of a smile crossed the thin, discreet lips of the alienist, in which disdain was mixed with pity; but no word escaped his distinguished lips.
Science was content to extend its hand to theology—with such confidence that theology did not know whether to believe in itself or in the other.
Itaguaí and the universe were on the verge of a revolution.
Chapter V:The terror
Four days later, the population of Itaguaí heard with consternation the news that a certain Costa had been taken to the Green House.
“Impossible!”
“What do you mean, impossible? He was taken this morning.”
“But he didn't deserve it... On top of everything else! After all he did...”
Costa was one of the most respected citizens of Itaguaí. He had inherited four hundred thousand cruzados in good currency from King João V, money whose income was enough, according to his uncle's will, to live “until the end of the world.” As soon as he received his inheritance, he began to divide it into loans, without usury, a thousand cruzados to one, two thousand to another, three hundred to this one, eight hundred to that one, to such an extent that, at the end of five years, he was left with nothing. If poverty had come suddenly, the astonishment of Itaguaí would have been enormous; but it came slowly; he went from opulence to wealth, from wealth to mediocrity, from mediocrity to poverty, from poverty to misery, gradually. At the end of those five years, people who used to tip their hats to him as soon as he appeared at the end of the street now tapped him on the shoulder with familiarity, poked him in the nose, and called him a scoundrel. And Costa was always affable and smiling. He didn't even seem to notice that the least courteous were precisely those who still owed him money; on the contrary, he seemed to treat them with greater pleasure and more sublime resignation. One day, when one of these incurable debtors threw a crude joke at him, and he laughed it off, a disaffected man observed with a certain malice:
“You put up with that guy to see if he'll pay you back.” Costa did not hesitate for a minute, went to the debtor and forgave him the debt. “No wonder,” replied the other, “Costa has given up a star in the sky.” Costa was perceptive and understood that he was denying any merit to the act, attributing to him the intention of rejecting what they had not put in his pocket.
He was also honorable and inventive; two hours later, he found a way to prove that he did not deserve such a label: he took some money and sent it to the debtor as a loan. “Now I hope that...” he thought without finishing the sentence.
This last gesture by Costa persuaded both the credulous and the incredulous; no one else questioned the chivalrous sentiments of that worthy citizen. The most destitute took to the streets and came knocking at his door, wearing their old slippers and patched cloaks. A worm, however, gnawed at Costa's soul: it was the concept of disaffection. But even that came to an end; three months later, he came to ask him for a hundred and twenty cruzados with the promise of repaying him in two days; it was the remainder of his large inheritance, but it was also a noble revenge: Costa lent him the money immediately, without interest. Unfortunately, he did not have time to be repaid; five months later, he was taken to the Green House.
One can imagine the consternation in Itaguaí when they heard about the case. There was no other subject in town; some said that Costa had gone mad at lunch, others that it had happened in the early hours of the morning; and they recounted his fits, which were furious, gloomy, terrible—or mild, and even funny, depending on the version. Many people rushed to the Green House and found poor Costa calm, a little startled, speaking very clearly and asking why they had taken him there. Some went to see the alienist. Bacamarte approved of these feelings of esteem and compassion, but added that science was science, and that he could not leave a madman on the street. The last person to intercede for him (because after what I am about to tell you, no one else dared to seek out the terrible doctor) was a poor lady, Costa's cousin. The alienist told her confidentially that this worthy man was not in perfect mental balance, given the way he had squandered his fortune...
“No, no!” interrupted the good lady energetically. “If he spent what he received so quickly, it's not his fault.”
“No?”
