A unit of account of the Empire, equal to a thousand mil-réis, written 1:000$000, with a colon after the millions. Here "conto" means money, not narrative: Pádua buys the house with the lottery jackpot, ten contos, and Escobar adds up in his head the rents of Dona Glória's houses and reaches 1:070$000 a month, one conto and seventy mil-réis.
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