"Francisca" ""Most illustrious and excellent Madam." "My dearest friend," "Your Excellency has certainly given due recognition to my pungent sorrow, and equal afflictions." "I wish to give you and Mr. Raimundo Borges, my condolences for the fateful event." "Your excellencies feel it as the loss of a brother, but I feel it as the loss of a son, whom I loved so much." "I miss you, my friend, as I miss the angel that I lost." "Goodbye dear friend, I cannot continue now, because my eyes will not allow me too." "Keep believing, my good friend, you true friend." "And accept my deepest feelings, even though I'm not going to visit you." "My regards to your husband." "Yours truly:" "Of your Excellency a friend like no other," "Maria Rita da Rocha Owen" "Vilar de Paraíso September 23rd, 1854."" "Most Illustrious and excellent madam." "Your Excellency has certainly due recognition to my pungent sorrow, and equal afflictions." "I wish to give you and Mr. Raimundo Borges, my condolences for the fatal event." "Your excellencies feel it as the loss of a brother, but I feel it as the loss of a son, whom I loved so much." "I miss you, my friend, as I miss the angel that I lost." "Goodbye, dear friend, I cannot continue now, because my eyes will not allow me to." "Keep believing, my good friend, you true friend." "And accept my deepest feelings, even though I'm not going to visit you." "My regards to your husband." "Yours truly:" "Of your Excellency a friend like no other," "Maria Rita da Rocha Owen" "Vilar de Paraíso September 23rd, 1854."" "With the independence of Brazil, Portugal was taken by a wave of instability and despair." "The death of D. Joao VI divided the kingdom between the partisans of his two sons, D. Pedro and D. Miguel, who were leaders of antagonistic movements, liberalism and absolutism." "Many young men, whose traditionalist ideals were, in 1847, defeated by the civil war, now incarnate a sceptical type, given to destructive passions." "This is the true story of the destructive passion of José Augusto and Fanny (Francisca)." "It was a masked ball, in Oporto, and José Augusto had come in only to ward off boredom." "Soon he regretted having done so, for his mourning for his mother was still much too recent." "Sad?" "Camilo's room in the Paris Hotel, in Oporto." " What are you staring at, José Augusto?" " Nothing." "We were talking about infinity, about love and magnetism." "We were talking about women, and yet you seem distant." "Don't you want to come with me to Lodeiro, to spend a season?" "I do." "But weren't you supposed to be traveling?" "I intend to." "But I must close some deals before that." "Come with me." "You know what I'm offering." "The house looks like a mausoleum, with an old out of tune piano and alcoves that stink of death." "Then I'll go, my friend José." "Two poor devils are the best consolation for one another." "How can one be virtuous in a prosperous city that yet cannot move a single inch forward?" "Here, in this city, the literati praise each other because they are equally poor." "Here we must be sensible to gratitude, so that we do not become accustumed to the role of well-doers." "Let us go to Lodeiro, my friend." "What shall we do there?" "You will write." "I will walk." "Both occupations are protected from ridicule." "Oh, no, they're not." "Ridicule can survive even in the mansion of the dead." "Just read the epitaphs." "But it does not matter." "We'll see if we, accustumed as we are to listen to small talk, will find it tedious to have serious conversations." "Santa Cruz do Douro" "House of Lodeiro" "Lovely!" "I had guessed so!" "So you are byronian, like five percent of elegant Portuguese men." " Five percent?" "What about the others?" " Others are simply great men." "Byron is fashionable." "And in literature, fashion is worse than anywhere else." "I don't know if I read this somewhere but if I didn't," "I say it myself." "Fashionable or not, when it comes to amorous literature, you and I both have dusty wigs and buckled shoes." " Was it in the ball that you saw her?" " It was there that we met." "You must come with me to the ball, and I will see you showing off those silken socks in the delirium of a waltz." "I don't dance." "I am not a mechanical toy, embracing the alabaster statue who is the feuilletonist's muse." "But, tell me, how is she like?" "Her face does not belong to this time or to this climate." "She reminds me of the Viragos that Virgil described." "I didn't like it, I tell you without the slightest fatuousness." "I didn't like it." "Then they told me that she was very conversant with literature." "In women, intelligence is either born with the heart, or kills it, if it comes later." "You know very well that what I wanted was to find a new heart, without experience, without knowledge." " And to educate it myself." " Now that is fatuousness." "In any case, we exchanged three letters, and that was all." "After the third one, I packed my luggage and came to the Douro." " Things didn't go beyond that." " The things that lure us." " What did you tell her in the last letter?" " I called her sister." "When I'm not interested in a woman, I offer her the honors of a relative." " And she?" " She replied to me." "She said something like this:" ""Your sister!" "With that affection I shall once understand everyone's pleasures." "My friend, she has caught you!" "What?" "Me?" "Didn't you create the need for a distance?" "Didn't you calculate the incoveniences of intimacy, as you say?" "Come on, my friend." "Let us not be strong when the honorable thing is to be weak." "Distance?" "Intimacy?" "It was her who broke the distance." "Any other man would have taken the opportunity." "You talk of Maria in a spiteful manner; you are an obstinate man." "You can't forgive Maria her suffering." "You have no love, you are jealous of pain." "You are a case for study." "A few days later." "My friend and illustrious writer, Camilo Castelo Branco." "Mi sister-in-law, Dona Josefa." "and my brother Raimundo." "Portugal is becoming a model for equality." "The Baron's kind." "I live in a street with five barons, two viscounts and ten commendators." "All of which are highly commendable." "Don't think that I reproach it." "No." "I have some bats of scepticism flying around my head with their black wings." "But, forgetting this crisis, I am a poor devil and I think, seriously and daily, about becoming a baron." "Brother, can't you achieve that with the conspiracies at the royal court?" "Now that they want to reinstitute the processions that D. Pedro had abolished, and that they are even thinking of dressing up soldiers as friars," "I could well be a Baron, for I also have the talent for that." "What's wrong, José Augusto?" "Have a seat; you didn't have your dessert." "José Augusto is in love." "Do you know what love is?" "It's the soul's louse, the vine's mildew." "And José Augusto is in love, for the 20th time in his lifetime." "A very good lady." "Are there many like that around here?" "Women dress up in such a manner that they falsify the gospels." "The husband cannot say:" ""Flesh from my flesh"" "when half of it is cotton paste." " Why don't you go take a rest?" " I will in a minute." "The cottier had a strife with his wife, and..." "Please help my mother, he wants to kill her!" "Please help!" "During a ball in the banquet halls of the Baron de Corvo." "An ass loaded with money can climb wherever he wants to." "That man who is laughing is Ricardo Browne, who owes me a duel, which is not exactly the same a handful of straw." "Come see the most beautiful three women in this hall." "Are they not the prettiest in Oporto?" "The entire Oporto is here." "Come see." "This is a chimera." "I prefer more classical things." "This woman loves someone." " Who is he?" " He is a pernicious man." " Pernicious?" "Why?" " He has no soul." "And what is a soul?" "A butterfly doesn't have a soul either." "Yet it knows, like no one, how to touch flowers." "Let him be." "With every word he says, a flower falls off your crown." "Every smile you send him will extinguish one of the thousand lights that brighten his world." " Let him pass." " I thought you were his friend." "Friendship does not preclude the ungratefulness of lucidity." "I am ungrateful, perhaps." "But without any infamy." "He has told me once:" ""My existence shall not be long"." "To think of death at the age of 25 is either poetry or a crime." " Is he your friend?" " He paid my debts and saved from death." "That doesn't mean that he's my friend." "He who knows what a friend is will know what a soul is." "The soul is not a chair that you offer to a visit." "The soul is..." " Is?" " The soul is a vice." " What?" " Don't treat me like an ignorant." "One can be innocent without being ignorant." "My God!" "In your face I can read curiosity, compassion, offended dignity, fear of your own candor or of the intention of manly courage." "Everything that ends in pernicious love." "Pernicious..." "A soul is not a chair that you offer to a visit..." "A soul is" "The soul is a vice." " What?" " Don't treat me like an ignorant." "One can be innocent without being ignorant." "My God!" "In your face I can read curiosity, compassion, offended dignity, fear of your own candor or of the intention of manly courage." "Everything that ends in pernicious love." "Pernicious..." " How is the ball?" " The ball is magnificent." "I don't dance and I don't like the music, it's true." "I was born to be a judge, in Terras do Bouro, where bitches mate with wolves." "I don't belong in this society." "Here, digestion is easy and spirits are witty." "Spirit is something you don't lack, Camilo." "And you will die an independent man, all bitten by your genius and smallpox, as they say." "And sing the poems of Camões every time" "I am called to testify in favor of my century." "Can you see that woman over there?" "It is Raquel, married to man twenty-five years older than her." "She has fourteen lovers, as far as it is known, but all sceptical poets in Oporto love her." "When each of their victories in the obtention of this woman's favors represents nothing but defeat." "Taken by jealousy and all the mistakes of rivalry's prejudices, they all end up as deserters, yet not being unfaithful to her." "But have you also been her lover?" "I've been indiscrete..." "For indiscretion or frivolity," "I let her read a letter that Maria had written to me." "She returned it to me and said:" ""I could never challenge you to exchange letters." "When written, these things should be prohibited"." " You were imprudent!" "She is a beautiful woman, with a thick mouth and the dull skin of creole women." "You were fascinated with the prestige of being her lover, but, in fact, you avoided provocative encounters." "I pretended to respect her, something that Raquel considered wise." "When you do not want a woman, you should promote her confusion, something which is not hurtful like a simple "no"." "Oporto is particularly tolerant of unfaithful women as long as they are intelligent enough not to prefer the lover to her duties before society." "Tastes are not to be discussed, as long as we don't make mistakes because of them." "It is a mistake to be tendered by a destiny, when it is only about loving a man, something brief and of little importance." "Beautiful Raquel, furthermore, has but one passion:" "To pile up a solid fortune and administer her rents." "The way she fights with the servants or settles accounts with a foreman, will harden even the most enchanted heart." "Truth is, things are made easy for her everywhere." "Deeds, land acquisitions, innumerable businesses." "It is more harmless to offer her favors with corruption than feelings with consequences." " We scared the cattle away from the fair!" " And split our drinks!" "We smashed those cakes and buns!" " We made women scream!" " Ora pro nobis." " We blew up mortars!" " Ora pro nobis." "When a sad man laughs, it's because he found someone even sadder." "If you suffer at the age to be happy, you'll never believe in happiness again." "Neither as a casual thing, nor as a reward." "I know what that is." "You'll want sorrow forever if it has carried you in its bosom and been your nursemaid." "Unhappiness is a form of renouncement;" "it has nothing to do with disgrace." "It is the most torrid of lovers and for her we'll sacrifice everything:" "honor and friends, and even God." "We are 23 years old." "When we are old, will we know what youngsters talk about?" "I wish I could live in a place like this." "To be what I could have been, in my village, if I had never left." "Here, a woman would have the value given to her by the first passion." "The women who live in that house must often sit under this tree." " Who lives in that house?" " Maria and Fanny." "Let's leave." "This sadness is too much." "We almost reached a point in which we love women we have seen only once in our lifetimes." "I'll never forget this place, this day, the nostalgia that I feel." "Let's eat fried shad and find two young girls." "You are right." " Which one do you prefer?" " They are not my type." " What if we fall in love?" " You, in love?" "Weren't you sceptical?" "Isn't your heart like the trunk in my room, hard and empty?" "Do you think I cannot love a woman?" "You can." "But only as an effect of a galvanic shock." "You'd drop dead." "I shouldn't tell you this." "Sometimes we say cruel things so that we don't cry." "Listen, José Augusto, some people were not born to love someone." "Loving thy neighbor is a trifle that distracts us from frightening things." "Passion is one of those frightening things." "Not the passion for glory, or for a woman." "It is perhaps the consequence of this lack of eternity." "I feel spiteful for not being a god." "Let us forget all that, José Augusto." "Let us never return to Vilar de Paraíso." "Those two girls are snobs." "Their mother is a smug woman." "I bet that all of them would laugh at everything that makes us cry." "They lock themselves in their rooms, eat croquettes and laugh about everything." "Listen!" "Friendship is the only thing that Gods envy about humans." "Back in Oporto, on a theatre night." "Why don't you greet him?" "I will not feed the pride of that stupid man." "Do you think he loves Raquel?" "He loves her if others covet her." "If she cheats on him, he'll love her as long as they say:" " "What a beautiful woman!"" " We are all like that." "Love is but a crystallization of desire." "José Augusto is whimsical, but not perfidious." "At the age of twenty-three, nobody is yet a Marquis de Sade." "Wake up and think about it." "I think you are sleeping in the shadow of your feuilletons." "Novels are harmful to many people, but not their authors." "There are people who can't find their own place in life and then want to conquer it by force." "They think they are exceptional and accuse others of not understanding them." "José Augusto is one of them." "He thinks he is D. Juan, or Hamlet." "His mother died before he could understand death as a law of nature." "He sees it as an unforgivable vileness." "He has a passion for novels." "He reads up until 4 a.m., which is too little for a vocation and too much for an aristocrat." "You envy him." " I don't envy a man who does not define himself in his consciousness or experience." "When he looks stern, he's an idiot." "When people think he is melancholic, he's just a scoundrel." "And even when behaving as if he is rich, he lies with the sole determination that I recognize in him." "I advised him to wed a rich woman who writes poems and offers him a cigar box with the figure of Psyche having the wings of a butterfly." "You are being a moralist..." "the country deserves that from you because it is more inclined to commerce than to imagination." "Every retired poet enrolls in an academy and sells olive oil." "Our efforts to be delicate are worth something." "Virtue will cost you much if you're not an expert in it." "The sky wasn't made for the sparrows, no matter how high they can fly." "In my opinion, you are jealous of José Augusto." "If he deserves it or not, that is another question." "Camilo and José Augusto returned to Santa Cruz do Douro." "The great secret is not the romantics." "Only their ignorance is romantic." "Let's take the other way." "I don't want to be seen." "This is not my place, it's the cottier's." "You'll see." "They will soon ask for cigarettes and liquor." "That's what they ask for." "We don't know if that's what they want." "Those are the words." "But what are words?" "They are a kind of law, but nobody knows, in fact, to what it applies." " They are drunkards, nothing more." " About visible things one should never say "nothing more"." "I need solitude and I need you." "And you need me to help you create another heart." "From now on, I am in charge of you." "House of Vilar do Paraíso." "When José Augusto came to the Owens' house, as he did everyday to see Maria, he bumped into Camilo." "See what you did!" "Don't be so fastidious, Fanny, José Augusto didn't notice it." ""Or is it that the dryness of Spring no longer shows you the flowers?"" "Camilo had rented a small house in Vilar de Paraíso which was close to José Augusto's." ""There are secrets among the living that conjure shadows of the dead"." " Who are you writing to?" " Someone to whom I am a slave and who must pay me for this slavery with tears." "Who?" "Is it Fanny?" "If someone loved Fanny, I'd kill him." "Come on..." "Friendship is usually less bloodthirsty." "The landlady is a pious vareira;" "by giving me this room with the blue bunk bed, she's informing me of her ritual procedures, which are lugubrious, related to the tragedies in the sea." "And she forgets to put oil in this lamp." "You didn't understand." "I meant to say that Fanny is not a plaything for an ennuied man." "I also think that way." "She is there, in that house, between vulgarity and spite, like Daphne, transformed into a laurel tree to escape god Apollo." "Don't you love her?" "No." "But I know what I'm rejecting." "You have no way of knowing it." "Am I some sort of handicap?" "Do you think I cannot love Fanny?" "Well, I'm going to arouse an immense love in her." "A love censored by me, excited by my own severeness." "To promise, to subdue, to give hope, to feed desire just to study the consequences of nonsatiation." "To skim her forehead with a kiss and then pass by without a touch." "To look at her, with a deep and austere gaze." "To seed illusions and reap shame, humiliation and guilt." "To create an angel in the plenitude of martyrdom." " Could you do it?" " To promise, to subdue, to give hope, to feed desire just to study the consequences of nonsatiation." "To skim her forehead with a kiss and then pass by without a touch." "To look at her with a deep and austere gaze." "To seed illusions and reap shame, humilliation and guilt." "To create an angel in the plenitude of martyrdom." " Could you do it?" " Wouldn't it be more beautiful than procreation?" "Isn't it to be truly fertile and in greater harmony with the work of God?" " No talking about God here!" " Why not?" "He is in my genealogy." "Wait, José Augusto." "We promised to trust one another." "I risked my honor when I trusted you." "Virtue interests you as a road to an easy triumph." "To me, only perfection means something." "Perfection, even if in vice." "But regardless of any agreement with others." "Do you have a soul, José Augusto?" "I'm asking you if you have a soul." "The soul!" "If I could cry over my wasted, ridiculed youth, then I would have a soul." "My ferocity is what clings me to life." "Isn't this a soul as well?" " You are a child, José Augusto." "A child made man through disgrace." "Now I see that there are no superficial men." "I used to laugh at them." "My talent could fool your lazy stupidity ten times." "And suddenly one single aristocrat avenged you all." "You made me learn that imagination, even of the pettiest bourgeois, knows no law!" "You are a portent, but isn't it better to put you off like I did with that lamp?" "Ashes instead of desire." "Consciousness instead of passion." "Can this be a soul?" "On the next day, by providential chance," "Manuel Negrão passed by his door." "Well, if it isn't Manuel Negrão!" " Glad to see you." " Cheers, my friend!" "I'm going on a trip to Lisbon, to visit my grandmother." "I remember her very well, The Countess of Magé." "Exactly." "And, of course, I could not go without stopping by." "Here, in this stagnant place." "What about Coronel Owen's daughters?" "Talent is corrupted with amorous banalities, in conversations with Fanny on the church steps and in strolls with her along the beach." "I hold the silk umbrella so that she can remove her shoes and I carry them in my hand." "Ridiculous, these maneuvers around a girl who is always sad and sleepy." "And in whom I truly have no interest." "I'm going with you, this must end." "I'm going with you." "The troops reached Vila Pouca under a coat of thin snow." "Soldiers were hungry and were wearing the white shoes they stole from Sá da Bandeira's uniform." "I entered a hostel and just as I was making myself comfotable with a fire made of old cork oak, while waiting for a chicken and a ham cooked in an iron pot, António Rangel," "MacDonnel's lieutenant, called me from the door:" ""Either you are a deserter or you are coming with us right away." "Bring the chicken if you want to"." "It would be wise to retreat, but I took the chicken." "I ate it with everyone in the ridge's ravines, which were covered with snow." "Only when we reached Saborosa did we have a long break." "The General Staff took refuge in the Pensalves Mansion." "Pieces of linen were falling over my head, from a stretcher where an old woman was spinning." "The wind hit the shutters as if it were a human hand, and I fell into a deep sleep in the kitchen's warmth." "At dawn, the general ordered us to gather." "I was sixteen, and was taken by the idea to follow MacDonnell until death." "I know the rest." "Farewell, Negrão." "Take the chicken, take MacDonnell and whatever you want to." "And let me stay here." "Just tell me one thing:" "Where was the general?" " What general?" " General Santiago," "That Spaniard that women loved so much." " MacDonnell had demoted him." " Life is cruel!" "I was jealous of him!" "Men like those rob us of our self-respect." "He could speak to women like nobody else." "What a tone!" "What a look!" "What a moustache!" " He married a noble lady who had been the lover of Dom Miguel." "He was the only one who sacrificed everything for the cause." "Look." "There is the stupid city of Coimbra." "I wish to have a honest notion of my ignorance;" "that's why I didn't graduate." "The revolution of "Maria da Fonte" saved me." "Goodbye." "I miss my Spanish cloak" "Listen, don't tell this to anyone." "I don't like being under the spotlight." "When he left Coimbra, he did not come back to Vilar de Paraíso." "He returned to Oporto." "Until José Augusto came to his door, and not waiting for an answer, entered the house with his horse." "I was thrown out of Paraíso." "And Eva... did she stay?" "It was Eva who threw me out." "We had a serious conversation." "Tell me." "I have ten minutes for a serious conversation." "And then I'm going to write a theatre chronicle, or even worse." " Tell me." " An unbearable intrigue took over the Owen house." "Maria reproached me." "She accused me of being cold." "And the colonel, I think he wrote from Lisbon demanding an explanation." "Well, the atmosphere grew tense and full of suspicion." " Was there any talk about marriage?" " No." "And I wouldn't allow it." "You know how I am when someone imposes conditions." "Even Maria never discussed that subject with me." " And Fanny?" " What about Fanny?" "How does she see this?" "What does she do in the middle of all that?" " Fanny is an angel." " Of course she is." "But isn't your constant presence a form of compromise?" "I don't think so." "In any case, I never asked for Maria's hand." "If I had done it, I would keep my word, even if I had to shoot myself in the head on the wedding day." "If there ever is any misunderstanding, I will retreat, honestly." "That sounds wise." "Next day, José Augusto returned and took his horse to the living room, indifferent to the landlady's reproaches." "Stop!" "Stop!" "This is no place for a horse!" "There is no better way to evaluate the robustness of a house than to park a horse in the living room." "Damn you!" "I told you, this is no place for a horse!" "Horses grow nervous when the floor creaks or vibrates too much." "You can sleep peacefully." "This place is safe." "Here goes the deepest and most well-kept secret of my life:" "I love Fanny." "I am not surprised." "That's why you wanted to kill me some time ago." " What about her?" "Does she love you?" " Necessarily." "No one falls in love like this without knowing that he's loved." "You don't tell me!" "I know one hundred and twenty cases that are an exception, to put it like that!" "But how am I to enter Paraíso again?" "Through the door of honor, if that's the one by which you left." "The heart's honor cannot be measured by a common pattern." "Try to understand the situation." "Maria believes she was abandoned;" "she will believe she was betrayed." "Projects which are born in passion widen the reach of our ideas." "I recall that you told me this, up there, in Lodeiro." "Think about it and decide." " I can't give you any advice." " I'll write to Fanny." "Camilo left Oporto." "Fanny replied to José Augusto, treating him like a brother and forbidding him to talk about love." "He cried and fell into great despair." "When Camilo returned, he met with a very distinct situation." "José Augusto was loved by Fanny." "Camilo had gone to visit a friendly family, in the Lugar da Rasa, in Gaia, where he met José Augusto." " Will you ask for her hand now?" " I will abduct her." " That is an useless scandal." " Useless or not, that's what I will do." "I had two alcoves in a boat furnished." "I'll take her up the river to Lodeiro and then we'll marry in my chapel." "I have nothing else to say." " Reconsider it!" " It will happen today." " What?" " The escape." " Think it over, wait a few days." " Impossible." "She is waiting." "I will write to her;" "she will understand." "She will understand." " Don't write to her, it's too late." "Then go." "Your youth ends here." "Within one hour you will be the most unfortunate of men." "Wait!" "Save yourself, there's still time." "Do not worry." "Men are never unhappy." "What is a man, for God's sake?" "What is a man?" "The abduction." " Are you hurt?" " No, no, I'm fine." " Where are we?" " I don't know, I don't know." "Let me take some rest here." "We should continue." "Continue?" "We're lost." "I don't know where the river is, nor the road." " Do you regret this, Fanny?" " No, I don't." "We will continue when there is light." "Soon the day will break." "These are your letters." "Wait, José Augusto." "Let's see if this horse also flees." "It's the fisherwomen." "I will ask them where we are." "It frightens him that people will notice that he's in a difficult situation." "This is Vilar de Andorinho." "Nearby is the Soeime farmstead, owned by José de Melo." "I will call for help." " Don't leave me here." " I won't." "But you can't walk much further." "Don't leave me alone" "Paddle." "There is land." "Paddle." "There is land." "Paddle." "Paddle." "What is a honest person?" "Paddle." " Did I sleep?" " Just a little." "Paddle." "Paddle." "There is land." "Paddle." "He'll kill you, Fanny." "He'll kill you." "Your love is made of things that don't belong to you." "It is made of my desire, my joy, my sorrow." "I have given you a soul and, with it, everything that a soul can do." "I can wrap my soul in my shadow and take it with me." "What will become of you two then?" "Do you think you are a god?" "No, I'm not a god." "I'm ugly, scrawny and my eyes are diseased." "Nor do I need anything from you two." "I exist spontaneously." "Life does not disconcert me, nor does it delude or terrify me." "And José Augusto?" "José Augusto is nothing but a vulgar servant." " Let me out." " No, no, wait." "He is a servant and nothing more." "A servant who bends before any semblance of prestige." "He is a servant of pretty words, pretty deeds, and pretty silly things." "Your love is a pretty silly thing only for as long as I am with you." "After that, it will be just a silly thing." "Get out of my sight, you envious and evil man." "Now I know why honest people hate you." "What are these honest people, after all?" "They are a consequence." "So goodbye, my consequence, beautiful woman of Paraíso." "Paddle." "There's land." "Paddle." "The arrival at Lodeiro had the expectable discretion." "Fanny at once retreated to the old room of José Augusto's mother." "Next day..." "Don't go out." "Take a rest." "Give your orders." "Feel at home." "I'm going out and coming at night." "I won't be near you very often." "Things must go in the proper manner." "We're getting married in a short while." "I must write to my mother." "And my father too." "Love me, and do whatever you want." "Are you coming back very late?" "What did you say, Fanny?" " And my little horse?" " Everything is in order, master." "A fine little animal you have here." "You are the portrait of master José Augusto's mother." "Madam had very beautiful dresses." "Had..." "Don't bother, I will take care of that." "Madam." "Master José Augusto has sent you a note." "To tell you not wait for him because he's not coming for dinner." "Very well, Clotilde." "What shall I serve?" "I have eels with brown gravy." "But your Excellency doesn't like it." " Anything is fine." "Tea and bread will be enough." " But Madam will starve." "Don't bother, Clotilde, I'll be fine." "Come in." "Master José Augusto left you this note." "He's gone to Oporto." "Has he left yet?" "Master José Augusto?" "He has left one hour ago." " Who has gone with him?" " Marques, who else?" "A chaplain with no miter, a squire with no duty." "Some men are lucky, others are patient." "D. Josefa ordered me to tell you that she'll come to visit you, Madam." "I lent him two towels and I never saw them again." "Men's houses..!" "They were made of damask linen." "I'll be very sorry if they are lost." "José Augusto, when is he coming?" "In five days." "I don't know." "He didn't tell me." "Were it not for men and their ways, everything would be much better." "Tell me something about your life in Paraíso." "Well..." "I'd tender my flowers and go for a walk by the end of the day." "I'd sit on the church steps and make drawings of the fields;" "an irrigation ditch covered with vines and a mare with a foal on the side." "Children would sometimes come to see the drawings." "They'd laugh, as if there was something magical about it." "The sea wind would blow the drawings away and children would run to grab them." "Children here are rude." "All they do is begging." "This is a forsaken breed." " Why?" "Their fathers are drunkards." "What will they learn but bad words and how to steal rabbits from the warren?" "They are raised like savages and then one day they kill a priest, a friend, or the mother of their own sons." " Kill?" " What do you think, Fanny?" "This is not Paraíso, nor a greenery for tuberous begonias." "This is the countryside, with rude, jealous and miserable people." "They are lazy and beg like blind men." "But they say it's even worse in Douro." "They only work if the foreman threatens them." "They throw their food onto the floor if they think it's cold or salty." "They don't attend church." "I don't even know if they feel pain." "They die like animals in a stable, on a bundle of straw." "Old women beg till they are one hundred years old." "I met one who came walking from Marco every Friday." "She talked about the time when she was a young girl." "Do you know what she talked about?" "About her first romance, when she was twelve." "It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to her." "Poor woman." "This girl knows nothing about life." "It is bad marriage." "Things you learn too late won't bring you any experience, only unhappiness." " Do you want to stay over for dinner?" " No." "I must go." "Maybe some other day." "Goodbye, my daughter." "If it were not for men, and their ways, the world wouldn't be as it is." "Hugo Owen is responsible for organizing my wedding with Fanny, but he refused to meet me." "It seems to me that everybody has calmed down now." "Only you know the secret of my arrival in Oporto." "You know, José Augusto, it is bad to be a scoundrel twice." "I know a few stories about that woman when she was single." "Of the time when she was married, I hope you'll tell me." "I hope you laugh and love her." "When it comes to love, being serious is a great misfortune." "Your friend Camilo said it, a merchant of words whom we both despise." " You are an old child, Raquel." "And I love you." "You are the only woman that I miss." "And missing someone is love." "You have a silly smile and you love me." "You have a farmer's moustache and you love me." "I thought you only had three passions:" ""Reading Byron, marrying a rich lady and living in Terreiro do Paço"." "Me, a minister?" "I may be eccentric, but I'm not out-fashioned." " What they say is that you are ruined and that you would marry a rich widow even if her dowry included her cook, her old dog, and her first husband's portraits." "But now you abduct an English woman who writes poetry and is nothing more than well-off, the worst situation for a witted woman." " Why?" " Come on..." "Why?" "Mediocrity is the religion of jurists and their wives." "Balzac said: "She had wits, although her husband was a jurist"." "You're waging war against me, Raquel." "And Balzac didn't say "jurist";" "he said "notary"." ""She was faithful to him, although she was a notary's wife"." "What memory you have, José Augusto!" "Romantics have an incredible memory." "I'm going to the Browne's house." "They are original, but not typical." "You are, from now on, a typical man." "Your only salvation is to go insane." "Every house will then receive you again, and people will admire you once more." "Colonel Owen will give you his daughter, but without a dowry." "Her mother offers a few diamonds, as a simple souvenir." "I don't need souvenirs." "These people annoy me." "They think I want their daughter for their money and their name." " I don't want anything from those spies." " Spies?" "Mind your tongue." "Wasn't Owen the counselor of Dom Pedro?" "During the Oporto siege, he used to visit the King at 11 p.m. The king was coughing up blood, he was already sick." "But he listened to Owen's words, it is known." "Political hatred created those images." "Hatred is a boat, and those who paddle it remain nameless." " There is too much hatred." " Not enough." "If it were enough we wouldn't endure this life without glory, without future, without nothing." " Where is Camilo?" " He's around." "He writes a lot." "He flirts with the nuns with an unbelievable conviction." "He is a Luther without a doctrine Come have dinner today." " Come have dinner today?" " Look, it seems that he's here." " I've heard much about you lately." " Good or bad?" "When people talk about us it's always bad." "When it's good, they speak low and not openly." " What do they say of me in Oporto?" " What they said of Socrates in Athens." "That you are vain and very ugly." "Listen, do you want to join me for lunch tomorrow?" " I must write an article." " Does the article pay your lunch?" "Not with partridges and oysters, no." "Virtue is like that:" "give in quickly to atone earlier." "Would you like to have a calessino like this one?" "José Augusto, would you like to have a calessino like this one?" "They make them here now." "I would." "I'll think about it." "Don't miss lunch tomorrow." "You were the angel whom I begged God to send and save me." "Not a very recommendable place for a lonesome man like you." "Normally a lonesome man is someone who likes being alone, with many people around." " Solitude, the Oporto way, is usually like that." "Oh, my friend José Augusto." "Let's joke around!" "I'm tired of serious conversations." "Just yesterday I heard a lady quoting a book on the harvesting of rice." " Do you have fun with those things?" " I don't have fun." "The hatred of success has soaked my spirit." "I lost the humor of the anonymous genius." "When they read my articles, there are people who say:" ""This poor devil is not a bad writer"." "And you?" " I'm going to get married." "There's still time, José Augusto, don't get married." "I love her, she's in love, and society demands it from me." "Society demands that you jump into the river, that you drink vinegar." "It demands you a fraudulent love and the importance of being the hero of a mediocre romance." "Is that what you want?" "Is that what you want?" "What I feel is perfect love, Camilo." "Beyond perfection there is tedium." "Or else, if made perfect, it vanishes completely." "Don't get married." "You're going to kill her." "Kill her?" "But I love her!" "You love with pride." "You only love the luxury of loving, nothing more." "Fanny's love and the friendship of a literati like me..." "A man who is rich at the age of twenty-five cannot have greater ambitions than these." "The only thing than cannot be greater is your malice." "It surpasses the reputation you already had." "You're wrong." "It can be much greater." "Do you know who I am, Camilo?" "I could just put you out of here with a good whipping right now." "I know who you are..." "You are a poor devil." "You know how to say it all with few words." "That's good, because what I really can't stand is those moralizing feuilletons of yours." "Tonight I must pick Raquel at the theatre." "If you wish to wait for me at the Guichard, we can continue this talk." ""These are not railroad stock shares for those are not yet in the catalogue of utopias." "It is just petty literature, to keep you busy on your honey moon." "Camilo"." "I shall read them." "Fanny!" " Can't you forgive me?" " I can." "What I can't do is love you." "I could love you much, but I don't." "Love is our second creator." "You had no love for me." "You don't have enough seduction for me, nor am I hypocritical enough for you." "But you will forget me." "If there is a person who can make me forget you, I shall hate that person." "Were those letters that bad?" "I only know that you complained about me to a stranger." "You said I don't understand you." "I offer you a brother's name, Fanny." "Your sister, your daughter, your friend." "your wife, your slave if you want it." "I swear that you love me and that the world is a paradise." "Man is good," "God is merciful, I am your equal, soul of your soul, blood of your blood." " No, I'm nothing for you." " Your letters have been circulating among my friends." "They can be copied and be printed in the newspapers like a vulgar feuilleton, word by word." "To whom did you write those letters?" "I love you, José Augusto." "I love you the way God loves sinners." "You need to be loved that way." "Vicente!" "Vicente!" "From now on, from now on, I want you to bring me lunch and dinner!" "Women annoy me!" "You wretch!" "I had seen this coming." "Madam, do not worry." "The hearts of men are made of garlic vine." "Even dead they don't deserve our tears." "Is there something you need?" "No, nothing." "Thank you." "I'll be in my room." " Good night." " Good night, Madam." "Camilo had a new room in the Quinta do Pinheiro." "Manuel Negrão, who had gone visiting him, thought that he didn't look well..." "Have you read Manon Lescault?" "Do you know who Tiberge was?" "Such was the man that I lost." "I was ungrateful to him." "But without any infamy." " Certainly, certainly." "But you can hardly stand on your feet." " Leave me." "He doesn't love her." " It's a mistake." " José Augusto?" "What is not a mistake?" "Within nine months, and by mistake, a small child will be born and it will continue the line of mistakes, for eternity." "Within nine moths death will be the midwife of what we create in our heart." "I tell you:" "I'd give my talent to the first beggar who'd come and say:" ""She loves you"." "Did you love Fanny?" "What else is new?" "!" "Find consolation in a lock of her hair." ""Little does he know about sadness, he who tells a sad man to cheer up"." "The deepest sorrows grow with consolation." "To assuage them sounds like an offense." "How were you taken by such a passion?" "I never thought Fanny interested you, or that she looked at you." "I know you." "Satire will overcome tragedy, and you can save yourself." " I can save myself, but through the roads of hell." "which are not that bad." "I suppose they are paved with absurdity, betrayal, slander." "They're bad for you, Negrão, for you hate to be on the spotlight." "Go away." "I must write a chronicle." " I can see you're cured." " I am dead!" "But what difference does it make?" "José Augusto and Fanny went visiting Raimundo and Josefa in the Casa da Capela." "I will consult my friends to see if they approve of my wedding after the episode with the letters." "I've written to José de Melo to gather my closest friends and debate this matter of honor." "Are you insane, my brother?" "Who can be a judge of that, but for your own consciousness?" "Do not worry." "My heart tells me that we will never be strangers." "Gentlemen." "You all know the facts that brought me ill fame." "I have taken Fanny Owen from her house and given her my own." "Now I came to know of some letters that this child wrote to another man when compromise had already been declared between us." "Shall I keep my word and get married?" "In this case bereft of logic, logic orders you to marry." " I loved Fanny but not anymore." " A wedding out of mercy may tempt you as a new emotion, but it will bore you tomorrow." "You came to investigate Fanny's past so that you can relinquish your responsibility in a story that lost the merits of novelty." "I believe that all this is unwise." "If you don't marry, maybe Fanny will meet with another love who can make her forget the shame of the first one." "I only regret that our character as men makes our affections so strong and that we can't withdraw our heart as fast as the hand we offer to a friend." "I'm going to marry Fanny, and I don't love her." "My consciousness is enlightened, but it loses me." "The best way for an aristocrat to enlighten something is to be hung on a street lamp!" "Read Byron, eleventh stanza, twenty-eighth verse of "D. Juan"." "Represented by an attorney, Fanny's family didn't attend the wedding in the Church of Santo Ildefonso." "Mr. José Augusto Pinto de Magalhães, here represented by his legal attorney, Marcelino de Matos, do you take Francisca Owen, here represented by her legal attorney José de Melo e Silveira, as your lawful wife," "as per the rites of the Holy Church?" "I do." "Miss Francisca Owen, here represented by her legal attorney, José de Melo e Silveira, do you take José Augusto Pinto de Magalhães, here represented by his legal attorney, Marcelino de Matos, as your lawful husband, as per the rites of the Holy Church?" "I do." "It rains." "The newlyweds will be happy." "To whom did Fanny write those cursed letters?" "To a Spaniard, it is said." "Calumny needs imagination to make itself forgivable." "Camilo's hand is all over this." "A Spaniard!" "This is obviously his idea." "Words slide through the populace's memory like water through tiles:" "they leave more filth than they clean." "That same day, in the Casa da Capela in Santa Cruz do Douro." "Madam, the master has ordered me to tell me that he's gone to Oporto, and that you should not wait for him." "Very well." "You can go to sleep." " Goodnight, Madam." " Goodnight, Franzina." "Fanny often talked with a relative of her mother, from the Rocha Pinto family." "Animals are happier;" "their instinct never lies to them." "With us, when instinct approaches us, all the duties, conveniences, and even worse things emerge." "You will be very happy." "This is just a bad phase of your marriage." " All weddings are like that." " Be it, but..." "What sort of consolation is that for me?" "I don't want any consolation." "I want to die and I will eventually die." "I have a destiny to fulfill and I will fulfill that destiny." "You can't live by feelings only, Fanny." "No, I can't." "That thing they call poetry is madness." "What is real is energy, matter, blood and body." "Nothing will remind him of me if he does not feel me." "I wanted to conquer him, tie him to me, steal him from everything, even himself." "To rob him from the sorrows which are his own." "From the cupidity that his heart feels for all that is himself." "I'd offer him, in exchange, a blazing and boundless love." "If I don't see him today, I'll die." "Fanny, Fanny." "Unhappiness is a rare gift!" "Wait." "It's them, and I don't feel any joy." "What an absurd heart!" "When I feel less distant from him, I value my love less." "The men of the house have reached." "Good afternoon." "When men reach home even green firewood burns." "How's the weather outside?" "We know it's windy, it comes from the sea." "They're not listening." "I could confess a crime right now and I wouldn't have neither a judge nor an executioner." "Passion turns sins into matters of little importance." "What a beautiful gaze!" "If angels are pure intelligence they must gaze like this." "Men and women!" "I wish I were a tree by the road, instead of the good wife and Mr. husband." "Back in the Lodeiro house." "Sister, I can see you are very tired." "You must take care of yourself." "You know, sister, this stubborn attitude from my father, of forbidding me to write to my beloved ones, especially my mother, makes me sad." "Just today I received one of my own letters back." "Letters are returned, unopened." "It is Maria who sends them back, with her handwriting." "You shuold dismiss Franzine." " Why?" " She behaves in a very inconvenient manner." "Sister, don't you see how she stares at José Augusto?" " What's wrong with that?" " Don't say I didn't warn you." "Don't stand so close to me." "You stink!" "Feeling better, Franzina?" "God help you, my daughter." "You are so young." "Never think about anything with your heart is sealed and unhappy." "Oh, my dear, my dear!" "One day, Fanny saw a letter in the hands of José Augusto and recognized Maria's handwriting." "No, but give me that letter." "What's wrong?" "It is a letter like any other letter." " No letter is like any other." "Some are pigeons, others are crows." "I know who wrote that letter." "To know so much mortifies a person." "Fanny!" "My Fanny!" "The goddess of love usually enjoys malice." "The remedy for malice is to let go... to suffer." "Wherever I go I leave the imprint of a crime." "Damn it!" "We are not unhappy, are we?" "We ferociously live our happiness, that is the case." "Do you love another?" "If you do, I'm her friend." "I will make a shawl for her to use it the theatre, by your side." "No, I don't want to do that." "It would have to be drawn with blood and pierced with needles, taken from my heart." "Do I bring you that much harm?" "Why don't you go out like you used to do when you went to the river?" "That one over there." "It's a small river, not a big one." "You used to say it was made of your tears." " That was so long ago, Fanny." " Then take your horse to the hill, through the pine grove, from where, if you scream, the wind carries your voice to the sea." "Go!" "When you're far away, my heart has only room for your return." "Jealousy disappears like a dog we throws stones at, and despair hides with shame." "I'll wait for you, and that's all that matters to me." "Fanny, men do not wish to be loved like that." "They were not made for a love like that." "It humiliates us." " Whose letter is that?" " The letter?" "You obstinate woman!" "Angel of perils and malice, that's what you are." "Is that the reason why I live like this, imprisoned and surveilled?" "Is that why behind every door I find a spy?" "They know if I'm sad, If I'm happy." "If I eat meat or decline wine." "They know all, and they tell all." "To whom?" "To whom?" "In this house Camilo has servants who are more his than yours." "He pays them to know how we live." "Tomorrow he will say that you beat me, and the entire Oporto will know it." "Take that letter, and let it burn the air that you have in your chest, the same air with which you utter such hateful words." "It was Fanny who had the idea to go to Bom Jesus do Monte to spend a season." "Camilo went there to visit them." " What a surprise!" "You look much better." " I am not." "There's no cure for heart matters." "Only different stages of the same disease." "What are you reading, Fanny?" "Byron, José Augusto's favorite reading." "Listen:" ""When you've never been and you will never be lovers," "Earth offers absolutely no friendship compared to a woman's." "Byron is the gospel of the egotists." ""She loved her husband, or, at least, she believed to love him." "But this love demanded her an effort;" "A painful obligation!" "She had no reason to complain, or reproach him no questions or domestic strives." "This was an exemplary union, serene and noble, yet cold"." "Don Juan and that chaste Adelina." ""This friendship that man feels for man, she was capable of that like no other woman has been before." "like no other woman had been before"" "Fanny!" "What's happening to me is terrible." ""No doubt that here, much like with the laws of blood, the secret influence of sex will exert its innocent power"." "Was it him who convinced you of such a monstrosity?" " Was it him who convinced you?" " Not at all." "A woman is capable of everything when a foot is pressing her heart." " It was you who told me that." " You're lost, Fanny." "I now know a demon called stubbornness." "Yawning has become my most authentic emotion." "I learnt that we can use more liveliness in affections when we are distant from passions." "Everybody should know that." "It should be taught in schools." "No one can reproach me for what I feel." "Camilo went visiting Manuel Negrao in the Quinta do Mosteiro." "Fanny is dead!" "I've seen her not long ago." "She has the putrid stench of a corpse, and those eyes that you knew are translucent like the eyes of an owl." "Translucent..." " You exaggerate!" " I don't." "And that fills my heart with grief." "Nobody there is perfectly sane." "They all cry and fell into deep sorrow." "Mortified lives have a reward." "They end with a smile, like you say." "But I could have ended, with a smile, when I was sixteen, quite far from a mortified life." " You would die like a hero, which is the only way to pay all our debts." "Rangel was full of debts, and that's why he gave his life side by side with MacDonnell." " It's possible." ""Miguelism" was not about D. Miguel." "It was about us, the inaccomplishable." "When José Augusto came with Fanny to Oporto, and stayed in the Barthés Hotel," "Camilo was already reluctant to visit them." "If you are to cry like that, I wish you hadn't recognized me." "What's wrong, Fanny?" "What is the reason for your suffering?" "Nobody tells me anything." "Nothing serious." "It's a pain, here, underneath the left kidney." "And it had reached the chest." "I had a chest ailment as a child, and I used to cough a lot." "I'd take poppy syrup at night, to soothe me." "She is very weak." "We are going to Madeira, to spend a season." "Would you like to come?" "They never left continental land." "But José Augusto's house in Vilar de Paraíso was still furnished." "Upon returning to the Lodeiro house, Fanny wasn't feeling well and so they stayed there." "Dona Maria Rita came to visit her daughter." "Fanny, Maria is going to get married." "What dress will she wear?" "Mine will be of white satin." "I want my night to be so brilliant as to dispel darkness." "Don't cry." "Oh, don't listen to me, and don't cry!" "The spirit of a sick woman is called presumption." " Isn't there a man who can love me?" " He loves you, Fanny." "Very much." "Yet you are not ordinary people." "Fire burns in the innermost of vulgar things." "Look, José Augusto." "I started on the wrong track, but it doesn't matter." "I will be back." "José Augusto." "Son!" "What is an ordinary person?" "Tell me, José Augusto." "Once I walked down a street, one of those nobody talks about." "At least, in the presence of girls." "I walked by, by mistake." "To take the shortest cut." "Because something was dragging me there." "And I saw it." "Sitting by the door of their houses, that looked like dovecotes." "I saw them, vulgar women." "On their skins, coarse levantine gowns with small bouquets of wild pansies." "And so many bowknots, ribbons, fringed cords and plumes that they looked like large cradles prepared to accommodate a child, a princes' son." "They were coarse." "They were teaching lust, the coarse kindred of eternity." "I love you." "I wish to die, before the mystery of our love becomes a banal sin." "Tell Camilo that my heart grieves for being unable to love him." "If I could be happy with you, I would always see a dark cloud hovering over that happiness." "It would be his sadness." "I believe that the heat of my passion would make you go beyond the limits of pleasure." "I want to conquer you, José Augusto." "To possess you, steal you from everyone else and yourself." "From your genius, from your genius." "I told you about my star." "But who do you see in that star?" "Surrender will be easy." "You know, José Augusto?" "I no longer suffer with those who suffer." "Your disgrace does not stir me anymore." "The only thing I miss is my heart, which I lost." "José Augusto isn't here, Fanny." "It's the doctor, doctor Joaquim Ferreira." "Memory has gone with the soul." "It seems that there is something..." "How were the shoes she was wearing when ran off with me?" "How were they?" "Of goat-skin?" "With a silken lace?" "Of cotton?" "If we drop some holy wax over her heart, she will awake." "But no one wants to summon the dead." " I'm to blame for much of this." " No, that's not true." "She had a propensity; she was anemic since childhood." "She was sick at the age of 12." "I think she had a bruised lung since then." " If I could be sure!" "I wouldn't feel this weight, this remorse, this darkness." " But you can't vouch for that." " Only with the autopsy." "In any case, a medical report." "I'd rather see you distressed than impatient." "There is some sort of offense that is burning your heart." "Three days ago I asked Fanny to see the diary she was writing." "The pages had been torn." "Her mystery wasn't there anymore." "I can't even imagine what made her suffer so much" "It is something that shall remain obscure forever." "Nevertheless, he trusted doctor Joaquim Ferreira in his famous testimony about Fanny's virginity, something that Camilo himself asks him to verify." "The autopsy episode suggests that José Augusto wanted to know for sure if Fanny had had a past." " Do I frighten you, girl?" " No, sir." "It's just that it affects me to enter this place." "It is a heart, a stagnant muscle, like a stopped clock." "It didn't affect you when you could feel it beating in her chest, in her pulse." "Then, yes, it was frightening." "Amazing things came out of it:" "the destiny of a man, and even of others." "The absolute and vengeful truth was also produced there." "And even God, on his throne, built Himself inside of it, like an engineering work, a bridge or a sidewalk." "Now look at it." "It's clean, harmless, odorless and fireless, with nothing to bring disorder into the world." "Let me go, Mr. José Augusto." "Did you like her?" "She was a good woman." "But you didn't love her." "She was an angel but you didn't love her." "She had virtues, talents, marvelous beauty." "But all that was useless for you." "No, don't rush." "Wait here." "What makes us love someone?" "We are broken in pieces, searching for our bodies, which are scattered all over the world." "The womb that wants to forget sin screams;" "the kidney that wants to cling to the right-side rib moans." "And the heart, in a thousand pieces, enters the most miserable alleys and asks for the whereabouts of the blood of which it is made." " Do I frighten you, girl?" " No, sir." "It's just that it affects me to enter this place." "It is a heart, a stagnant muscle, like a stopped clock." "It didn't affect you when you could feel it beating in her chest, in her pulse." "Then, yes, it was frightening." "Amazing things came out of it:" "the destiny of a man, and even of others." "The absolute and vengeful truth was also produced there." "And even God, on his throne, built Himself inside of it, like an engineering work, a bridge or a sidewalk." "Now look at it." "It's clean, harmless odorless and fireless, with nothing to bring disorder into the world." "Let me go, Mr. José Augusto." "Did you like her?" " She was a good woman." " But you didn't love her." "She was an angel, but you didn't love her." "She had virtues, talents, marvelous beauty." "But all that was useless for you." "No, don't rush." "Wait here." "What makes us love someone?" "We are broken in pieces, searching for our bodies, which are scattered all over the world." "The womb that wants to forget sin screams;" "the kidney that wants to cling to the right-side rib moans." "And the heart, in one thousand pieces, enters the most miserable alleys and asks for the whereabouts of the blood of which it is made." "It's good to know that I don't make you suffer;" "that's what freedom is about." "I am very impressed with a black butterfly that has been flying around me all night." "What can it be?" "What can it be?" "In days of great sadness, those in which I felt your absence, this house was full of white butterflies." "That apparition was pleasing to the heart." "Can you hear it?" "Can you hear it?" "It's our master." "So?" "If he feels like it, why shouldn't he take a stroll in the early morning?" "People say that he looks like a werewolf, his eyes like embers and his horse's feet sparking fire in the stones." "Let them talk." "Dear Raimundo," "I got your letter, which seized me thoroughly." "In this situation there is nothing that will ease the pain." "I believe that this wound will never heal; only in the grave." "Then, yes, for the idea of going where that angel of virtue has gone will be pleasing to me." "I've been living in solitude." "The parish rector sometimes comes to keep me company, and I go on trying to fool my sorrow." "But this illusion won't last." "All this did not happen in vain, because from now on life will be a grave burden." "I intend to go to Lisbon, by land, but I will inform you before I leave;" "I shall stay for the whole month." "As you see, the departure in not that painful." "How will I live on this year remembering the previous year?" "And how could I forget?" "The world is like that, life carries such changes, but I've been too unhappy." "Goodbye." "Keep sending news and thank your wife for her kind letter." "I apologize for not replying, but the mailman's hurry and my condition haven't allowed me to." "I will always be your brother and friend," "José Augusto." "Vilar de Paraíso, 12/8/54" "My dear sister, I'm leaving today to Lisbon on the Cysne." "My body and soul ache." "Give my regards to Raimundo, and tell him that I expect to see him in Lisbon." "I offer you this portrait of me and your friend." "I cannot be a friend but of those who respect the memory of that angel." "I will write as soon as I arrive." "As for the other portrait, I ask you to put in the visiting hall, where it used to be." "Your grateful friend, José Augusto" "Oporto, 9/9/54" "José Augusto searched for Hugo Owen in the hotel where he was settled in Lisbon, hoping to rummage through Fanny's past." "And since I am one of those men to whom love is a source of life," "I have the right to a better knowledge of Fanny's past." "Don't haunt me with Fanny's memory." "Your sense of humanity does not coincide with mine." "You are a perfect example of the chaotic state of society." "Full of noble principles but without the spirit to apply them." "Sensibility and selfishness that feigns it." "Pompous speeches and miserable experience." "Some organizations are so susceptible that it would be difficult to believe in their truth." "If I were to ask myself who I am, I would be in great difficulty." "I am not to be believed;" "I cannot go any further than this." "Yet this is not about me now, but about Fanny and her mystery." "Let silence fall over that insane story that was her life, my sister's life with you, and perhaps it can still." "be of some use." "Fanny's mystery, you say!" "If indeed there was a mystery, let it reach a ripe age." "Maybe it will a fecund subject, many years from now." "It is not for us to discover it." "Give me exact details of all that happened." " You already know that he's dead." " Dead?" "Who?" "Another poet?" "They die by the bunches at this time of the year." "The soul's dysentery grabs them, and farewell." "Let me listen, Vieira de Castro A friend's death is a serious matter." "There are only two serious things:" "honor and money." "Death is nothing but a moral accident." "Bring us brandy." "A provoked accident, Vieira de Castro." "The fact is that his death was suspicious." "José de Melo wrote to Raimundo asking for a clarification on the matter." "He thinks, and we all think, that there was something very uncanny about it." "Why was Fanny's brother in the same hotel where José Augusto died?" "All I know is that José Augusto represents society, exactly as we find it today." "Talent without common-sense, savagery blended with culture, sensibility and the most entrenched egotism." "I think he didn't want to kill himself." "He took a little opium to ease that disquiet he carried all the time." "And the dose, it seems, was not even larger than the one he used on other occasions." "But the outcome was fatal." "The outcome of all things in the world is always fatal." "Had he survived, that too would be fatal." "Nothing corrupts fatality." "If fatality were a woman, I would marry her." "If I ever write about this case," "I will say he died of a brain fever." "It is more elegant, and the readers like it." "Listen!" "Bring more brandy." "Translated by Sateri for Karagarga." "Kindly sponsored by Dudu  Stiller."