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Quincas Borba · Chapters CXIX to CXXXII

Marriage, Rupture, and the Offended Major

Appearance and RealityDesireMoney and WealthLoyalty and Betrayal

Chapter CXIX: Doubt or Debt in the Speech

Section summary

Dona Fernanda's husband, Teófilo, arrives shattered, with the newspaper in hand: in his speech it had come out as "na dívida abstém-te" ("in debt, abstain") instead of "na dúvida abstém-te" ("in doubt, abstain"), a swap of one letter which, in a debate over a credit from the Ministry of the Navy, can look like advice to default. Dona Fernanda consoles him with kisses and, at lunch, to divert him from his worry, launches the plan to marry Maria Benedita; her husband hears that the girl loves someone without a name and guesses that it is the wife's cousin, Carlos Maria.

Analysis

Teófilo arrives shattered because the swap of a letter can make him sound crude, as though he were advising default, and at that moment that was worth more than all the great works. Dona Fernanda consoles him with kisses and, to divert him from his worry, launches the plan to marry Maria Benedita. The husband hears that she loves someone with no name and guesses the cousin.

Chapter CXX: A Confidence on the Way Out of Mass

Desire

Section summary

On the following Sunday, leaving mass, Dona Fernanda tells her cousin Carlos Maria, who turns up at church, that someone secretly adores him, with a passion that has become quiet adoration, and only at the end says the name: Maria Benedita. Carlos Maria, who had found her cold, is captivated by the story, and "all his prejudice turned into sympathy." He begins to see the young woman, savoring her confusion and her modesty. And so the courtship begins.

Analysis

Dona Fernanda tells her cousin that someone adores him in secret and gives the name only when he is already gripped by the story. What changes Carlos Maria is not the young woman, whom he found cold, but being loved: "all his prejudice turned into sympathy." He begins to see her and savors her confusion and her modesty, "the apotheosis of the beloved man."

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Chapter CXXI: Rubião Trusts Sofia's Tear

Section summary

Rubião calms down about the marriage of Maria Benedita, thinking "so much the better," and attributes to chance the glances that Sofia casts at Carlos Maria between that night and the wedding day. He clings to the memory of her tear, and to the Sofia who is present, who was never so attentive nor so affectionate with him, perhaps out of late affection or because of the failure of her first adventure. The narrator warns that there are virtual offenses that sleep.

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Chapter CXXII: Carlos Maria on Horseback, Engaged

Section summary

Three weeks later, on the morning of the wedding, Carlos Maria rides out on horseback, on his usual outing, and reads everything as a nuptial homage to himself: the casuarinas, the birds, and a pair of butterflies that accompany him. In front of an old house a parrot squawks and spoils the illusion, and he asks himself whether the happiness he gives will also be interrupted. The song of the wrens consoles him: he sees himself as the heavenly birds that will raise up his wife, and he already foresees her kneeling, arms on his knees, grateful, "all imploring, all nothing."

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Chapter CXXIII: The Same Picture at the Bride's Window

Section summary

At the same moment the groom imagines this picture, Maria Benedita, at the window, looking at the waves, sees herself kneeling at her husband's feet, quiet and contrite, "as at the communion table, to receive the host of happiness." She thinks: "Oh! How he will make me happy!" The words and the thought are different, but the attitude and the hour are the same as the groom's.

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Chapter CXXIV: Farewell on the Steamer

Section summary

The couple marry and, three months later, set off for Europe. At the parting, beside the rail of the steamer, Dona Fernanda is as cheerful as if she were coming to welcome them back, and does not weep, because the pleasure of seeing them happy is greater than the grief of the separation. She asks Maria Benedita, for the last time, whether she is going happily, and hears: "Oh! Very much!" The narrator accompanies her joy with an Italian aria.

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Chapter CXXV: Sofia Ill, Among Memories

Section summary

Sofia pretends to be ill and does not go aboard. In her room, among gifts from Rubião, she recalls his phrase about making her empress, reads on a page of a novel the sentence that he deserves to be loved, and loses herself in herself.

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Chapter CXXVI: Palha Asks for a Talk

Section summary

Rubião and Cristiano Palha come down from the steamer to the launch and return to the Cais Pharoux, careful and silent, after saying goodbye to the couple who left for Europe. Palha is the first to open his mouth and tells Rubião that he has for some time wanted to talk to him about something important.

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Chapter CXXVII: Rubião Sails by Heart

Section summary

Rubião, entering a steamer for the first time, returns with his mind full of the noises on board: the confusion of tongues, the trunks, the women who weep and laugh, the flowers and fruit brought from the land. Looking at the bar and the immense sea beyond it, and with no notion of geography, he forms a confused idea of the other countries and surrounds them with a mysterious halo; since it costs him nothing to travel this way, he sails by heart for a while, without seasickness, without waves or winds.

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Chapter CXXVIII: Palha Proposes Separating the Partnership

Money and WealthLoyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

Cristiano Palha, asking Rubião to hold his hat while he lights a cigarette, delays the news and says that he wants to wind up the business, because he has been invited to run a banking house, and prefers to dissolve the partnership now, at the end of the year. Camacho, he says, claims that Rubião will soon be in the Chamber. Rubião, relieved to find it is not an earthquake, asks whether there is a hidden motive, a break in the friendship; Palha replies that Maria Benedita's marriage should have been with Rubião, had he not refused, and Rubião finds the reason excellent. The narrator says that Palha wants to rid himself of a partner whose growing extravagance might bring him danger.

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Chapter CXXIX: The Bank That Did Not Exist

Appearance and RealityMoney and Wealth

Section summary

The narrator reveals that there was no bank: Palha invented the reason to dissolve the partnership with Rubião, because the truth would not serve. He prospers with shares, bonds, and war supplies, has already engaged an architect for a mansion, and thinks of a barony.

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Chapter CXXX: The Major Complains About the Palhas

Loyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

In the modest house on Rua dos Barbonos, Major Siqueira complains to Rubião that the Palhas did not invite him to Sofia's birthday or to the cousin's wedding, that Palha, at the store, pretended to be absorbed in an account when he asked about the date, and that Sofia, in her coupé, pretended not to see him. Rubião says there may have been confusion with the work of the Alagoas committee, and Dona Tônica wants to soften things by recalling that Sofia sent word through the boy to ask after her when she was ill, which the major takes as contempt.

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Chapter CXXXI: A Promised Dinner, Without an Invitation

Section summary

Rubião treats the major and Dona Tônica with sympathy, stops defending the Palhas so as not to drive the major to despair, and when he takes his leave he promises to dine there "one of these days," without an invitation: he does not want banquets and will come when the notion takes him. Dona Tônica, who went as far as the landing but did not go beyond it because of her shoes, goes to the window to watch him leave.

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Chapter CXXXII: Preserves and the Postponed Dress

Section summary

As soon as Rubião turns the corner, Dona Tônica proposes to her father that they buy cans of preserves, peas and fish, to warm up for the day he comes to dinner, and, since the major has only the money for her dress, she says the dress can be bought next month or the month after: "I can wait." The major, stretched out on the sofa, rereads the house's only novel, Saint-Clair das Ilhas, in the passage of the toast to the oppressed and the punishment of the oppressors.

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Reading of the block of chapters

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