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Dom Casmurro · Chapters LXXVIII to XCII

Secret for Secret and Manduca's Death

Language and NarrationReligionLoyalty and BetrayalMemory and the Past

Chapter LXXVIII: Secret for Secret

Loyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

Bentinho feels the need to tell someone what is going on with Capitu, and chooses Escobar. Returning to the seminary on Wednesday, he finds him restless and hears from him that he is distracted and must disguise it. He asks whether Escobar can keep a secret, and says he cannot be a priest. Escobar answers "Nor can I" and confesses he does not intend to finish the course, that he wants commerce, and asks for silence. Bentinho whispers "a person..." and tells the courtship in outline, without the chapter of the hairstyle. Escobar advises him not to become a priest and guarantees the secret. In the conversations that follow, Bentinho praises Capitu's moral qualities and suggests that Escobar get to know her. Escobar says Bentinho's mother is an adorable lady.

Analysis

Escobar notices Bentinho's distraction and asks him to disguise it, admitting he has his own reasons for being distracted, which shows a friend who observes and also keeps something of his own. Bentinho, moved, says Escobar is the person who came closest to his heart at the seminary, and Escobar returns the declaration without repeating the formula, with a smile.

Secret for secret; I too intend not to finish the course; my wish is commerce, but say nothing, absolutely nothing; it stays just between us.
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Chapter LXXIX: Let Us Get to the Chapter

Section summary

Bentinho enjoys hearing Escobar call his mother adorable, and says her portrait, which he is looking at as he writes, still bears that quality in its face. He asks whether she truly obliged him to the ecclesiastical career, announces a grave, complex, and delicate point that he waited to treat later, and promises to treat it in the next chapter.

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Chapter LXXX: Let Us Come to the Chapter

ReligionLoyalty and BetrayalMemory and the Past

Section summary

Dona Glória was God-fearing, and Bentinho's ecclesiastical career was the object of a promise made when he was conceived. His father died without knowing, and she was left as the sole debtor. She began to postpone his entry into the seminary, which the narrator compares to reforming a letter, until a relative spoke of handing over the agreed price and she consented. That day she wept without explaining, and the narrator supposes a foretaste of longing and, perhaps, regret for the promise. He also presumes she thought of an exchange of promises and rejected it as disloyal. When Capitu's assiduity won her over, the mother began to hope that the courtship would make her son incompatible with the seminary and undo the contract without any fault of hers. The narrator compares her to Abraham and Capitu to the angel, and says Capitu became the flower of the house.

Analysis

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Chapter LXXXI: A Word

Section summary

Bentinho transcribes a word from his mother: on the first Saturday, on arriving home and learning that Capitu was on Inválidos Street with Miss Gurgel, Dona Glória asks him why he does not go to see her, since Sancha's father had offered him the house. Cousin Justina hints that they might be courting, and Bentinho looks at her as if he wanted to kill her. On Sunday, at eleven o'clock, he runs to Inválidos Street, where Gurgel receives him sadly, for his daughter has a fever. Capitu comes to call her father and, on seeing Bentinho, becomes entirely another, the usual young girl. The two talk in low voices for a few minutes.

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Chapter LXXXII: The Sofa

Section summary

Capitu and Bentinho sit on the parlor sofa, which offers them the rush seat, and talk. He asks whether his stay there will be long, and explains that he came on his mother's advice. Capitu repeats "Her advice?" and adds, her eyes shining, "We shall be happy!" Bentinho repeats the words with his fingers, pressing her hands.

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Chapter LXXXIII: The Portrait

Section summary

Gurgel returns and says that his daughter is calling Capitu. Bentinho rises without composure, while Capitu rises with naturalness, asks about the fever, sends her regards, and leaves. Bentinho envies her ease. Gurgel observes that Capitu "is a young lady now," and Bentinho sees her as a woman inside and out. Gurgel asks whether she resembles the portrait on the wall, which is that of his late wife. Bentinho answers yes before examining it, and Gurgel says that the forehead, the eyes, and the temperament are alike, and even Capitu's friendship with Sancha.

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Chapter LXXXIV: The Summons

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Bentinho leaves Gurgel's house satisfied and does not immediately hear the voice calling him. Already on Matacavalos Street, in a crockery shop, a gray-haired, shabbily dressed man, weeping, tells him that his son Manduca died half an hour ago, that Bentinho's mother sent flowers, and that the young man still remembered him. He invites him to see the dead man. Bentinho, too pleased, wants to flee, but his body ends up going in. He says he does not blame the man, and asks that he not be blamed either.

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Chapter LXXXV: The Deceased

Section summary

Bentinho enters the dark crockery shop, where Manduca's mother weeps in a corner and two children look in from the doorway of the alcove. He interrupts the description of the corpse, goes to the window, and contrasts the life outside with the picture inside. He reveals that Manduca, about eighteen or nineteen, suffered from leprosy: alive he was ugly, dead he was horrible. Bentinho looks, looks away, looks again, and leaves the room. The father asks whether he will attend the burial, and he answers that he would do what his mother wished.

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Chapter LXXXVI: Love, Lads!

Section summary

In less than three minutes Bentinho gets home and stops in the corridor, trying to forget the dead man. It is enough for him to think of the other house and of Capitu's fresh, lively face, and he exclaims: Love, lads!

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Chapter LXXXVII: The Carriage

Section summary

On the last step, Bentinho thinks of asking his mother for a carriage to go to Manduca's burial, and says it is not the desire to ride in a carriage. He then evokes his father's old sedan chair: two wheels, leather curtains with a glass peephole, the enslaved coachman who said "Pai João will take Nhonhô!", and the boy who told him to take his time with the mules. He liked to spy through the glass and imagine what they said of him: "that lady of Matacavalos Street, who has a son, Bentinho." His mother kept the sedan chair in memory of her husband, until the costs of the stable obliged her to give it up, and she kept relics of old habits.

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Chapter LXXXVIII: An Honest Pretext

Section summary

Bentinho corrects himself: the idea of going to the burial did not come from remembering the sedan chair, but from being able to miss the seminary the next day and make another, longer visit to Capitu, under the pretext of asking after Miss Gurgel, hoping to repeat the sofa and the clasped hands. He will ask his mother and, opening the gate, repeats under his breath the words of Manduca's mother: "Poor Manduca!"

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Chapter LXXXIX: The Refusal

Section summary

Dona Glória is perplexed by Bentinho's request to go to the burial, and reminds him that he would lose a day of seminary. He speaks of Manduca's friendship and the family's poverty. Cousin Justina opines that he should not go, since she never saw such a friendship, and she wins. José Dias suggests that her reason is not to lend the burial "the lustre of my person." Bentinho sulks, and later finds a particular flavor in the motive.

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Chapter XC: The Controversy

Section summary

The next day Bentinho passes the dead man's house without going in, fearing he will be called in, and recalls the only relationship he had with Manduca: a polemic two years earlier, when he was thirteen or fourteen, about the Crimean War. Manduca, ill, lay in bed, and on Sunday afternoons his father took him to the back of the shop to watch the street. Manduca defended the allies, and Bentinho defended Russia. Manduca proposed they exchange their arguments in writing, and all his letters ended with the same sentence. Bentinho carried the replies to the alcove, where the sick boy received him with a smile, and the father said his son had been cheerful since the papers began. Bentinho tired first, and Manduca insisted two or three more times. The narrator compares Manduca's resistance to that of Turkey.

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Chapter XCI: A Consoling Discovery

Section summary

Bentinho says that the reflections of the previous chapter were not made on the way to the seminary, but now, in the study at Engenho Novo, and that then he only thought he had been a comfort to his neighbor. Today he concludes that it gave him happiness, and the discovery consoles him, like credit in the settlement of his life, payment for one or two sins. He jokes that Manduca would be serving out purgatory for forty years for the happiness of two or three months.

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Chapter XCII: The Devil Isn't as Ugly as He Is Painted

Section summary

Manduca was buried without Bentinho, and the matter grieved him for the reason given. The melancholy over the first polemic of his life soon gave way, helped by two people: Capitu, whose image slept with him that night, and another who will appear in the next chapter. Bentinho asks the reader to conclude that the devil is not as ugly as he is painted: the leprous neighbor seasoned evil with anti-Russian opinion, and nature beckons the afflicted with a flower. The gardener says that violets need pig manure.

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