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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters XXXVIII to XLIX

Virgília Lost, the Death of His Father, and the Inheritance

AmbitionAppearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationDeath

Chapter XXXVIII: The Fourth Edition

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

With the crystal of his watch broken, Brás Cubas enters a shop on Goldsmiths' Street and finds Marcela, old, scarred by smallpox, owner of a jewelry shop. She recognizes him, tells him about her life, has the crystal bought despite his objection, and offers him jewels at a low price, because she wants the protection of acquaintances from another time and supposes that he, sooner or later, will marry. Brás suspects that she bargains only out of a passion for profit.

Analysis

Brás takes stock of the past: he asks whether the beauty of 1822 was worth a third of his sacrifices, and Marcela's face answers him that it was not. The judgment falls first on the young man he was, who did not know how to see, and only afterward on her greed.

Brás applies to himself the image of the book and grants himself a compensation that is only appearance, the elegant type and the luxurious binding. The sentence confesses that he still errs, and does so in a joking tone.

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Chapter XXXIX: The Neighbor

Section summary

While Brás Cubas thinks of Marcela's avarice, a watchmaker from the neighborhood comes in with his four-year-old daughter, Maricota, who wants to offer an Our Father to Saint Marcela. She kisses the girl, says that the family seems very fond of her, and her voice trembles with joy.

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Chapter XL: In the Chaise

Section summary

With the new crystal in the watch, Brás Cubas flees to the chaise and orders the coachman to go, but everything still seems stopped to him. He recalls the lunch, at which his father rehearsed the speech he would give at the Chamber, and wants to tell it to Virgília; the coachman warns that they have already reached the councillor's door.

Analysis

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Chapter XLI: Hallucination

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Virgília receives him in a bad mood, because she expected him earlier, and Brás Cubas apologizes with a horse that balked and a friend. Suddenly he sees her face eaten by smallpox, makes a gesture of revulsion, and she draws away; then he sees her whole again, and Virgília, silent, looks at him from above and cracks her fingernails.

Analysis

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Chapter XLII: That Escaped Aristotle

Section summary

Brás Cubas imagines a ball that rolls and passes its impulse to another: the first would be Marcela, the second he, the third Virgília, who had nothing to do with the first. From this he draws the solidarity of human boredom, and he asks how the chapter escaped Aristotle.

Analysis

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Chapter XLIII: Marquise, Because I Shall Be a Marquis

Ambition

Section summary

Lobo Neves, whom Brás says is no more slender, elegant, well read, or likable than himself, takes Virgília and the candidacy from him in a few weeks. Councillor Dutra, Virgília's father, warns him to wait for another breeze, because Lobo Neves's candidacy has the support of great influences, and Brás yields. Virgília asks Lobo Neves when he will be a minister and whether he will make her a baroness, and he answers that he will make her a marquise.

Analysis

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Chapter XLIV: A Cubas!

AmbitionDeath

Section summary

The father of Brás Cubas, astonished, repeats "A Cubas!" upon seeing the castles he had engineered come undone. Brás keeps vigil for part of the night out of spite, and the father dies four months later, on a May morning, among his children, Uncle Ildefonso, and his brother-in-law; Sabina is the sister.

Analysis

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Chapter XLV: Notes

Language and NarrationDeath

Section summary

Brás Cubas lists in a single sentence the wake and the burial of his father: the weeping, the draped house, the coffin, the prayers, the funeral coach. He says these are notes for a sad and vulgar chapter that he does not write.

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Chapter XLVI: The Inheritance

Slavery

Section summary

Eight days after their father's death, Brás Cubas, his sister Sabina and their brother-in-law Cotrim argue over the division of the estate: the house, the chaise, the coachman, the Black men Paulo and Prudêncio (the latter free for two years), and the silverware from the time of D. José I. Brás does not give in, the proposals for an agreement fail, and the divisions are made with the siblings at odds. Cotrim wants the silver for Sabina because she is married and needs a respectable pantry, while Brás is single and receives nothing; Brás replies that he can marry.

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Chapter XLVII: The Recluse

Section summary

Brás Cubas gathers Marcela, Sabina and Virgília into a single inner affection and invites the pen to enter the house where he lived semi-reclusive until 1842, writing politics and verse. Of the women he kept only initials, and when he thinks of Lobo Neves, the deputy, and of Virgília, the future marquise, he asks himself why he would not be better than him.

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Chapter XLVIII: A Cousin of Virgília

Section summary

Luís Dutra, cousin of Virgília and also a poet, asks Brás Cubas who has arrived from São Paulo; the answer only comes in chapter L. The narrator says Dutra's verses were worth more than his own and that, each time he published them and came to wait for praise, he talked about everything except them. Brás declares his purpose: he wanted to make him doubt himself and discouraged him until he eliminated him.

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Chapter XLIX: The Tip of the Nose

Section summary

Brás Cubas sets aside Doctor Pangloss's explanation and proposes that, like the fakir, each man contemplates the tip of his own nose, which balances societies. He proves it with a hatter mortified by his rival's shop and concludes that the two capital forces are love, which multiplies the species, and the nose, which subordinates it to the individual.

Analysis

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