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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters CI to CXVI

The Wall, the Weld, and the Old Leaves

Appearance and RealityDesireLanguage and Narration

Chapter CI: The Dalmatian Revolution

Section summary

Virgília tells Brás Cubas, on an October morning, of the political about-face of her husband, Lobo Neves. Brás says that this time she will be a baroness, and her gesture of indifference is belied by an expression of taste and hope. This makes him recall Count B. V., of the Dalmatian legation, who courted her for three months, and say he does not know what would have become of him if a revolution had not toppled the Dalmatian government.

Analysis

Brás measures Virgília by the nobility she loves and wonders whether an imperial letter would lead her to virtue, "out of gratitude to her husband". What he confesses without meaning to is his pleasure in another's misfortune: the massacre in Dalmatia, which he names with a "let us suppose", matters to him only as relief from his rival. Two readings fit: the frankness of one who, being dead, no longer needs to please the reader, or the mockery of one who knows the world is outraged in public and rejoices in secret.

I inwardly blessed that tragedy, which had removed a little pebble from my shoe
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Chapter CII: At Rest

Section summary

Brás says that the same man who rejoiced at the count's departure later committed a coarse, base act, with no possible explanation, and he refuses to tell it on this page: the chapter serves as a pause for his shame.

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Chapter CIII: Distraction

Section summary

Brás Cubas arrives an hour late at a meeting and finds Dona Plácida distressed: Virgília waited, wept and swore to despise him, and the old woman asks him not to abandon "Iaiá". He attributes the delay to "simple distraction", and three days later everything is explained, but not forgiven. Virgília praises her husband and threatens to separate; when she goes to leave, Brás holds her by the waist and makes her stay. During the scene he watches a fly dragging an ant caught at his foot, and when he tries to separate them he sees the fly escape.

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Chapter CIV: It Was Him!

Section summary

Reconciled, and with three o'clock already past, Dona Plácida sees through the window the husband of Iaiá and closes the lattice shutter. Virgília's terror lasts little: she pushes Brás Cubas into the alcove, sends Plácida back to the window and, once the first emotion is mastered, receives Lobo Neves. He says he was passing by and saw Plácida at the window; the old woman fills the room with exclamations to disguise her trembling, and Virgília puts on her hat and leaves with her husband.

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Chapter CV: Equivalence of Windows

Section summary

Dona Plácida shuts the door and drops into a chair. Brás Cubas leaves the alcove and takes two steps toward the street, saying he is going to snatch Virgília from her husband, and the old woman holds him back by one arm. He explains the gesture by the law of the equivalence of windows, formulated in chapter LI: the alcove was a closed window, and the act of leaving opened another to air the conscience.

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Chapter CVI: Dangerous Game

Section summary

Brás Cubas breathes, sits down and wonders whether it would have been better to lock Virgília in the alcove; he concludes it would have been worse, and wonders what is happening in her house. Dona Plácida offers to go to the house of Lobo Neves and promises not to go in if he is there. Alone, Brás thinks he is playing a dangerous game, feels longing for his marriage, and imagines himself married, with a charming wife and a baby in the nurse's lap, in a dark, green country house.

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Chapter CVII: Note

Section summary

The chapter is only the text of a note, which Brás Cubas reads and which chapter CIX calls "Virgília's note": nothing has happened, but the husband suspects, is serious and silent, and smiled once at Nhonhô after staring at him for a long time, scowling, and treated her neither badly nor well.

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Chapter CVIII: What Cannot Be Understood

DesireLanguage and Narration

Section summary

Brás Cubas calls the note a document for analysis and refuses to analyze it, leaving to the reader the notice of the coldness, the shrewdness and the dissimulated rage behind the lines. He says he read it three or four times that day and again the next, and that he cannot say what he felt: fear and not fear, pity and not pity, vanity and not vanity, love without delirium.

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Chapter CIX: The Philosopher

Section summary

After rereading the note, Brás Cubas eats little at lunch, and says he remembers that meager meal not because of the disaster but because of the reflection that Quincas Borba, who visited him that day, made to him: frugality is not necessary to Humanitism, which accommodates itself to table, spectacle and love, and may indicate a tendency to asceticism, "human foolishness". Brás does not relate the story the philosopher tells him and only says that he wears a frock coat and patent-leather boots, heir to an uncle from Barbacena. With his spirit tossed like a shuttlecock between the narration, the note and the Passeio Público, he asks that the exposition be left for later, and hears the invitation to Humanitism as a farewell.

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Chapter CX: 31

Section summary

A week later, Lobo Neves is appointed president of the province. Brás Cubas expected a refusal if the decree came again dated the 13th, the number that the husband of Virgília, according to her, regarded as fatal (chapter LXXXIII); but the decree bears the date of the 31st, and the transposition of the digits removes from them the diabolical substance.

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Chapter CXI: The Wall

Section summary

When Lobo Neves and Virgília are about to embark, Brás Cubas finds at the house of Dona Plácida a note saying he should expect her at night at the country house, and ending: "The wall is low on the side of the alley." He finds the note ridiculous and decides to go out of self-love, out of the humiliation of fleeing, and out of the idea of fear. Plácida replies that Virgília told her nothing and that she found the paper in his drawer: it was an old note, from the beginning of their love.

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Chapter CXII: Opinion

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

A few hours after the wall, Brás Cubas meets Lobo Neves on the Rua do Ouvidor; they talk about the presidency and politics, and the other leaves him after many greetings. Brás judges that he is afraid of opinion, and not of Brás, of conscience or of the law: opinion prevents separation and also vengeance, which would be disclosure, and obliges him to keep up the pretense of ignorance. Brás then imagines that time will harden the sensibility and that life will close without a single page of blood.

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Chapter CXIII: The Weld

Section summary

Brás Cubas concludes that opinion is a good solder for domestic institutions and for the political order; perhaps it will develop thought before the end of the book, perhaps it will leave it as it is. Against the bilious metaphysicians who take it for a product of the dull or the mediocre, he says its salutary effects prove that it is the work of the greatest number.

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Chapter CXIV: End of a Dialogue

Section summary

In a dialogue without narration, in which only Brás's last line names Virgília, Virgília and Brás Cubas take leave of each other on the eve of the departure, before people who are watching them. She asks whether he will go on board; he answers that it is impossible; she asks him not to forget Dona Plácida and says the letters will come through her. He asks whether it will be two years, and she answers that her husband says it is only until the elections. Brás tells them to separate because they are being watched, and she says it costs her a great deal.

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Chapter CXV: The Lunch

Section summary

Brás Cubas does not see Virgília leave, but at the appointed hour he feels relief and longing in equal measure. He asks the reader not to be annoyed: the romantic would be to suffer and not to lunch, but the biographical is to have lunched, as on other days, with the delicacies of M. Prudhon, cook of the Hotel Pharoux. He recalls the master and the time of the polka, of the Tivoli and of the Cassino, and, alone at the end of the table, at forty-odd, says that it was necessary to bury loves magnificently.

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Chapter CXVI: Philosophy of the Old Leaves

Death

Section summary

Sad at the end of the previous chapter, Brás Cubas says he was capable of not writing this one, but does not want to waste time. He tells that the departure of Virgília gave him a sample of widowhood: in the first days he stayed at home, catching flies with his eyes from the hammock, between longing and reverie. In that interval his uncle the canon and two cousins died, and he took them to the cemetery as one takes letters to the post; his niece Venância, daughter of Cotrim, was born. At other times he reread old letters, even those of Marcela, and he recommended to the reader that he keep those of youth, to learn the philosophy of old leaves.

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