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Quincas Borba · Chapters CXLVIII to CLIX

The Delirium in Sofia's Coupé

Appearance and RealityDesireMadness

Chapter CXLVIII: Rubião Without a Beard and the Emperor

Madness

Section summary

When he comes down from the moon, Rubião hears the dog's whimpering and feels a chill on his chin; he runs to the mirror and sees that, without the large beard, his face does not look bad. The dinner guests and the street approve; only Camacho, though he finds the mustache and goatee good, objects that the face is the mirror of the soul and should not be altered, and makes his own face a "moral necessity." Rubião nods yes and alternates between being himself and being the emperor of the French, without the two mixing. The narrator recalls the Florentine in Dante's Inferno, so entangled with the serpent that he could no longer tell whether they were one or two, and says that Rubião "was still two."

Analysis

The dinner guests and the street approve the new face; only Camacho thinks it should not be altered, because the face reproduces the firmness and constancy of the soul, and he makes his own face a "moral necessity." The argument of someone who asks fidelity from his financier is that of constancy. Rubião nods yes and, inwardly, alternates between himself and the emperor, returning to what he was when he went down into the street.

They balanced one another, neither without the other, both whole
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Chapter CXLIX: The Fallen Glove

Section summary

At the end of the week, Rubião visits Sofia to ask about her knee. She finds the new face better and supposes it to be the cause. As they go to pick up the glove, their faces bump in the air, and the two of them laugh.

Analysis

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Chapter CL: Rubião Gets into the Coupé

Section summary

Sofia accepts Rubião's hand to climb into the coupé and is about to say goodbye, but he gets in behind her and sits beside her. The footman shuts the door, and the carriage sets off.

Analysis

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Chapter CLI: The Lowered Curtains

Section summary

Sofia loses her voice and asks the carriage to stop, but fears a scandal. On Rua Bela da Princesa, Rubião lowers the blinds so that no one can see them, and sits silent beside her.

Analysis

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Chapter CLII: Repugnance and Pleas

Section summary

Sofia shrinks into the corner of the coupé into which Rubião got after her, uninvited, feeling repugnance, which the narrator calls the incompatibility of the skin, and thinks of going to a friend's house or telling everything to her husband. She asks Rubião to get out, even offering to kneel, and invokes his mother, who is in Heaven; Rubião, calm, praises his mother and the horses and says they can drive about aimlessly, talking where no one can hear them. Sofia looks for the reason he got into the carriage, need of transport, vanity or passion, and finds none, and calls him inexplicable, a monster.

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Chapter CLIII: The Imaginary Lover and the Duchess

DesireMadness

Section summary

Suddenly Rubião speaks to Sofia as to a lover: he recalls the first meeting, when she arrived in a calash and got down timidly, with her veil over her face, and he kissed the threshold of the door, and the Gottschalk concert at which her husband looked at them with the eyes of a jaguar. He asks her to call him Luís. Sofia, who looks at him fixedly, concludes that it is neither calculation nor mockery, but delusion, with the sincerity of someone who saw the things he relates. Only then does he promise to name her husband ambassador or senator, offers her the solitaire he wears on his finger, which she, frightened, refuses, and promises to make her a duchess. She proposes that the carriage go to her husband's warehouse, but Rubião has it stop and gets down, saying he will come later.

Analysis

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Chapter CLIV: Two Contrasts in the Street

Section summary

Once separated, Rubião, in the street, turns his head in every direction; reality takes hold of him and the delirium fades. He walks, halts before a shop, stops an acquaintance and asks him for news, in an unconscious effort to shake off the borrowed personality. Sofia, once past her fright, sinks into daydreaming: Rubião's stories give her longings, "longings for Heaven," and she reconstructs the calash and the man who would have said those endearments to her, who could not have been Rubião, and wonders who he might have been.

Analysis

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Chapter CLV: The News of the Mania

Madness

Section summary

News of Rubião's mania spreads. Some, not finding him during his hours of delirium, conduct experiments to see whether the rumor is true, and steer the conversation toward business in France and toward the emperor; Rubião slides into the abyss and convinces them.

Analysis

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Chapter CLVI: The War and Lucullus's Table

Appearance and RealityMadness

Section summary

With the Franco-Prussian War, Rubião's crises become sharper and more frequent. He reads every news item as a victory. The dinner guests, promoted to marshals, do not contradict him, and the poor table seems regal to him.

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Chapter CLVII: Sofia's Compassion

Section summary

Sofia, seeing in Rubião's illness the effect of his love for her, feels a compassion made of sympathy and selfishness. She avoids another coupé scene, listens to him in his lucid hours, and forgives him, believing herself the author of the harm.

Analysis

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Chapter CLVIII: Maria Benedita's Letter

Section summary

One night, Dona Fernanda asks why no one looks after Rubião, whom she had met the year before, and Cristiano Palha replies that the trouble is mild fits, ideas of grandeur that pass quickly, and that apart from that he converses perfectly. The deputy Teófilo, Dona Fernanda's husband, suggests that Palha have himself named Rubião's guardian, to salvage what little of the capital remains. Palha says that Rubião was nearly a relative of theirs, since he wanted to marry Maria Benedita, and Dona Fernanda shows Sofia a letter from Maria Benedita, happy and already a mother, full of the name of Carlos Maria; Sofia reads it with boredom, then with spite, and dissembles.

Analysis

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Chapter CLIX: The Rainy Morning

Desire

Section summary

On the rainy morning, Sofia turns over the letter, Carlos Maria, Maria Benedita, Dona Fernanda, and Teófilo's admiring gaze at the straw-colored dress. The names flash across the sky of possibilities like lightning.

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