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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters LXXVII to LXXXVII

The Presidency and the Mountaintop

AmbitionAppearance and RealityDesire

Chapter LXXVII: The Interview

Desire

Section summary

Virgília comes to the meeting with Brás Cubas laughing, without the frights of the first days, and reproaches him for not having gone to her house the day before, where her husband, Lobo Neves, whom she calls Damião, asked after him. Brás had stayed away out of jealousy: two days earlier she had waltzed twice with the same dandy. On hearing the reason, Virgília stares at him aghast and taps his forehead, and he laughs with her.

Analysis

Brás opens the scene by placing all the blame on Virgília and closes it with "It was clear that I had been mistaken": the defunct narrator counts against himself the jealousy he himself thought just. Virgília dismisses the complaint with laughter, without denying or justifying herself, and what is left for the reader is his embarrassment.

the flame had lost the frenzy of the first days to become a simple bundle of rays, calm and steady, as in marriages
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Chapter LXXVIII: The Presidency

Ambition

Section summary

Lobo Neves announces that he may take a provincial presidency and, despite Virgília's repugnance, treats it as settled, in the name of political needs and of the promise to make her a marquise. At Gamboa, Virgília, who has already told everything to Dona Plácida, asks Brás Cubas to go with them. He refuses, leaves the decision to her and goes out, hearing her weep, so as to hold her to the responsibility of shared life.

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Chapter LXXIX: Commitment

Section summary

Brás Cubas hesitates between pity, which draws him to the house of Virgília, and a selfishness that tells him to leave her alone with the problem, and he settles on a compromise: to see her only in her own house, in front of her husband, without saying anything. As he writes, he judges the compromise a sham.

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Chapter LXXX: As Secretary

Section summary

At the house of Lobo Neves, where Virgília is sad and her husband cheerful, Brás Cubas hears from him that he has not yet found a secretary, and receives the invitation to accompany him to the North as secretary, as a favor, since Brás, being rich, does not need the salary. He recoils as from a serpent, looks into the other's face for a hidden thought and finds none, and, with Virgília's gaze asking the same, says yes.

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Chapter LXXXI: The Reconciliation

Section summary

Resolved to accept the appointment, Brás Cubas receives his sister Sabina, who comes in a veil to propose a reconciliation because the family is dying out, and then his niece Sara, aged five, and his brother-in-law Cotrim, who arrives shortly after. They talk without alluding to the past; when they hear of the trip to the North, both condemn it, since his place is to keep shining at court, and Sabina says he needs to marry.

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Chapter LXXXII: A Question of Botany

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Happy with Virgília's love, her husband's trust, the secretary's post and the reconciliation with Sabina and her people, Brás Cubas begins to spread the word that he is going to the North as secretary. The listeners smile knowingly, and at Sabina's house the old surgeon Garcez makes a pun on Virgílio and Virgília; the glances of those present show that the affair was public, and Brás smiles.

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Chapter LXXXIII: 13

Ambition

Section summary

Cotrim takes Brás Cubas to the window and advises him to give up the trip: in the court such an affair would be lost in the crowd, but in the province the gazettes would print it, and he, without naming the affair, says he has known "about it" for long months. Brás wavers, reads the next day the decree of the 13th that appoints him, and in Gamboa Virgília tells him that Lobo Neves is going to refuse, for a reason told only to her: the number 13, linked to the death of his parents.

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Chapter LXXXIV: The Conflict

Section summary

Brás Cubas blesses the fatal number and recalls the mare that died in place of the virgins in the sacrifice of Pelopidas. Lobo Neves does not tell him the reason for the refusal, goes about sad and divided between ambition and doubt about his own superstition, and, since the minister does not believe in private motives, turns to the opposition. Dona Plácida, more naive, only knows that a shoe turned up toward the air "does harm".

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Chapter LXXXV: The Mountaintop

DesireThe Meaning of Life

Section summary

Saved from separation, Brás Cubas and Virgília love each other with more ardor, and the presidency stays as a seasoning of love. They resume the adventure, Brás says, as Scheherazade resumes her tales: that was the high point, the mountaintop, and from there they began to descend.

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Chapter LXXXVI: The Mystery

Section summary

Downhill, Brás Cubas sees Virgília downcast and presses her until she tells him something that the text does not reproduce. He feels a fluid run through his body and kisses her forehead with Abraham's gravity; she caresses him with a maternal gesture. Brás leaves the mystery to the reader.

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Chapter LXXXVII: Geology

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Viegas, the old miser from whom Virgília hoped for a legacy for her son, dies. Brás Cubas uses the occasion to speak of the dignity of the husband, Lobo Neves, a "layer of rock" that life did not carry away, and of each person's moral geology, and tells the case of Jacó Tavares, the most upright man he knew: he denies being at home to the importunate Dr. B., receives him with feigned joy and says he is going out with his wife, and, accused by Brás of lying four times, defends the social lie.

Analysis

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