 Preface of Brazilian Tales The noted Brazilian critic José Veríssimo, in a short but important essay on the deficiencies of his country's letters, has expressed serious doubt as to whether there exists a genuinely Brazilian literature. I do not know, he writes, whether the existence of an entirely independent literature is possible without an entirely independent language. In this sense, Veríssimo would deny the existence of a Swiss or Belgian literature. In this sense too, it was no doubt once possible, with no small measure of justification, to deny the existence of an American as distinguished from an English literature. Yet, despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment, which helps to shape pronunciation as well as vocabulary and the language itself, is, from the standpoint of literature, little removed from the language as a determining factor. Looking at the question, however, from the purely linguistic standpoint, it is important to remember that the Spanish of Spanish America is more different from the parentongue than is the English of this country from that of the modern nation. Similar changes have taken place in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil. Yet, who would now pretend on the basis of linguistic similarity to say that there is no United States literature as distinguished from English literature? After all, is it not national life as much as national language that makes literature? And by an inversion of Veríssimo's standard, may we not come face to face with a state of affairs in which different literatures exist within the same tongue? Indeed, is not such a conception as the great American novel rendered quite futile in the United States by the fact that, from the literary standpoint, we are several countries rather than one? The question is largely academic. At the same time, it is interesting to notice the more assertive standpoint lately adopted by the charming Mexican poet Luis Urbina in his recent La Vida Literaria de México, where, without undue national pride, he claims the right to use the adjective Mexican in qualified letters of his remarkable country. Urbina shows that different physiological and psychological types have been produced in his part of the New World. Why, then, should the changes stop there? Nor have they seized at that point, as Senor Urbina's delightful and informative book reveals. So, too, whatever the merits of the academic question involved, a book like Alenca's Guarani, for instance, could not have been written outside of Brazil. Neither could Veríssimos own scenes from Amazon life. Brazilian literature has been divided into four main periods. The first extends from the age of discovery and exploration to the middle of the 18th century. The second includes the second half of the 18th century. The third comprises the years of the 19th century up to 1840, while that date inaugurates a triumph of romanticism over pseudo-classicism. Romanticism, as in other countries, gave way in turn to realism and various other movements current in those turbulent decades. Sometimes, the changes came not as a natural phase of literary evolution, but rather as the consequence of pure imitation. Thus, Veríssimo tells us, symbolism in Brazil was a matter of intentional parroting, in many cases, unintelligent. It did not correspond to a movement of reaction, mystical, sensualist, individualist, socialistic or anarchistic, as in Europe. Two chief impulses were early present in Brazilian letters, that of Portuguese literature and that of the Jesuit colleges. At the time of the discovery of Brazil, only Italy, Spain, France and Portugal possessed a literary life. Portugal, indeed, as the Brazilian critic points out, was then in its golden period. It boasted chroniclers like Fernão Lopes, novelists like Bernardinho Ibeiro, historians like João de Barros and dramatists of the stamp of Juviscente. The Jesuit colleges, too, were followed by other orders, spreading Latin culture and maintaining communication between the interior and the important centers. It is natural, then, that early letters in Brazil should have been Portuguese, not only in language, but in inspiration, feeling and spirit. Similarly, we find the early intellectual dependence of the Spanish-American countries upon Spain, even as later both the Spanish and the Portuguese writers of America were to be influenced greatly by French literature. Brazilian poetry, says Veríssimo in the little essay already referred to, was already in the 17th century superior to Portuguese verse. He foresaw a time when it would outdistance the mother country. But Brazilian literature, as a whole, he found, lacked the perfect continuity, the cohesion, the unity of great literatures, chiefly because it began as Portuguese, later turned to East, particularly France, and only then to Brazil itself. In the early days it naturally lacked the solidarity that comes from easy communication between literary centers. The same lack of communication was in a sense still true at the time he wrote his essay. The element of communicability did exist during the Romantic period, 1835 to 1860, whereupon came influences from France, England, Italy, and even Germany, and letters were rapidly denationalized. What was thus needed and beneficial from the standpoint of national culture prejudiced the interests of national literature, says Veríssimo. He finds, too, that there is too little originality and culture among Brazilian writers, and that their work lacks sincerity and form, 1899. Poetry was too often reduced to the love of form, while fiction was too closely copied from the French, thus operating to stifle the development of a national dramatic literature. Excessive preoccupation with politics and finance, where have we heard that complain elsewhere, still further impeded the arise of a truly native literature. Perhaps Veríssimo's outlook was too pessimistic. He was an earnest spirit, unafraid to speak his mind, and too much a lover of truth to be misled by a love of his country into making exaggerated claims for works by his countrymen. We must not forget that he was here looking upon Brazilian letters as a whole. In other essays by him, we discover that same sober spirit, but he is alive to the virtues of his fellow writers, as well as to their failings. It is with the prose of the latest period in Brazilian literature that we are here concerned. From the point of view of the novel and tale, Brazil shares with Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico the leadership of the Latin American republics. If Colombia, in Jorge Isaac's Maria, can show the novel best known to the rest of the world, and Chile, in such a figure as Alberto Blesgana, author of Martin Rivas and other novels, boasts a South American bauzac, Brazil may point to more than one work of fiction that is worthy of standing beside Maria, Martin Rivas or José Marmol's exciting tale of love and adventure, Amália. The growing importance of Brazil as a commercial nation, together with a corresponding increase of interest in the study of Portuguese, a language easily acquired by all who know Spanish, will have the desirable effect of making known to the English reading public a selection of works deserving of greater recognition. Just to mention at random a few of the books that should, in the near future, be known to American readers, either in the original or through the medium of translations, I shall recall some of the names best known to Brazilians in connection with the modern tale and novel. If there be anything lacking in the array of modern writers, it is a certain broad variety of subject and treatment to which other literatures have accustomed us. It is not to be wondered that that, in surroundings such as the Amazon affords an Indian school of literature, should have arisen. We have an analogous type of fiction in the United States literature, old and new, produced by similar causes. Brazilian Indianism reached its highest point, perhaps, in José Jelencar's famous Guarani, which won for its author a national reputation and achieved unprecedented success. From the book was made a libretto that was set to music by the Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes. The story is replete with an intensity of life and charming descriptions that recall the pages of Chateaubriand, and its prose often verges upon poetry and its idealization of the Indian race. Of the author's other numerous works, Iracema alone approaches Guarani in popularity. The dominant note of the author, after word much repeated in the literary history of his nation, is the essential goodness and self-abnegation of the national character. Alfred Descrainaux-Tonet, 1843 to 1899, is among the most important of Brazil's novelists. Born at Rio de Janeiro, of noble family, he went through a course in letters and science, later engaging in the campaign of Paraguay. He took part in the Retreat of La Laguna, an event which he has enshrined in one of his best works, first published in French under the title La Retreat de la Laguna. He served also as a secretary to Count de, who commanded the Brazilian army, and later occupied various political offices, rising to the office of senator in 1886. His list of works is too numerous to mention in a fragmentary introduction of this nature. Chief among them stands Inocencia, a sister tale, so to speak, to Isaac's Maria. According to Veríssimo, Inocencia is one of the country's few genuinely original novels. It has been called, by Meru, the best novel written in South America by a South American. A compliment later paid by Guglielmo Ferreiro to Graça Aranhas Canaan. Viscontonet's famous work has been translated into French twice, once into English, Italian, German, Danish, and even Japanese. The scene is laid in the deserted Mato Grosso, a favorite background of the authors. Inocencia is all that her name implies, and dwells secluded with her father, who is a minor, her negro slave Conga, and her caliber-like dwarf Tico, who loves Inocencia, the Miranda of this district. Into Inocencia's life comes the itinerant physician, Serino de Campos, who is called by her father to cure her of the fever. Serino is her Ferdinand. They make love in secret, for she is meant by paternal arrangements for a mere brute of a mule driver, Manassau by name. Inocencia vows herself to Serino, when the mule driver comes to enforce his prior claim. The father, bound by his word of honor, sides with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems foreordained, for Inocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manassau avenges himself by killing the doctor. A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor and a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic atmosphere. Comparing Inocencia with what has been termed its sister-work, Maria, I believe that Maria is the better tale of the two, although there is much to be said for both. The point did not be pressed. The heroine of Maria is more a woman, less a child than Inocencia, hence the fate of the Spanish girl is tragic, where that of the other maiden is merely pitiful. Inocencia, on the other hand, is stouter in texture. In Maria there is no love struggle, the struggle is with life in a certain sense. In Inocencia there is not only the element of rivalry in love, but in addition there is the rigid parent who sternly and at last mergersly opposes the natural desires of a child whom he has promised to another. Where Maria is idyllic, poetic, flowing, smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by a sentimentalism, Inocencia, by no means devoid of poetry, is romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as Maria's is peaceful. There is in each book a similar importance of the background. In Inocencia the point of honor is quite as strong and vindictive as in any play of the Spanish Golden Age. Maria shares with Inocencia relieving touches of humor and excellent pages of character description. Tones, o ensiliamento, is a violent antithesis to the work just considered. Here the politician speaks. In passages of satire that become so acrimonious at times as to indicate real personages, the wave of speculation that swept Argentine and Brazil is analyzed and held up to scorn. The novel is really a piece of historical muckraking and was long an object of resentment in the Republic. Everything from Tones' pen reveals a close communication with nature, an intimate understanding of the psychology of the vast region's inhabitants. His shorter tales, which I hope later to present to the English reading public, reveal these powers at their best. Now it is a soldier who goes to war, only, like a military Enoch Arden to return and find his sweetheart in another's arms. Now it is a clergyman, the vicar of Soros, who, in the luxuriant environment of his charge, suffers the tortures of carnal temptations with the spirit at last triumphant over the flesh. Whatever of artifice there is in these tales is overcome. One of his most sympathetic critics tells us, by the poetic sincerity of the whole. Tonet, too, has been likened to Pierre Lothi for his exotic flavor. In Yerese Aguana, we have a miniature innocencia. Yerese and Alberto Monteiro fall in love and marry. The latter has been cured at the home of Yerese of Swamp Fever. The inevitable, however, occurs, and Monteiro hears the call of civilization. The marriage, according to the custom of the tribe into which Monteiro has wed, is dissolved by the man alone. He returns to his old life, and she dies of grief. A work that may stand beside innocencia and veríssimos scenes from Amazon life as a successful national product is Inglês de Souza's omissionário. Antonio de Moraes, in this story, is not so strong in will as Tonet's vicar of sorrows. Antonio's omissionary, with the vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle, unduty in the tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon seizes his body. Slowly, agonizingly, but surely, he succumbs to the enchantment overpowered by the life around him. Since Machado de Assiche, who should precede Azevedo, and Coelho Neto, who should follow him if strict chronological order were being observed, are both referred to in Section 3, which deals particularly with the authors represented in the sample assortment of short tales they are here omitted. With the appearance of Humulato by Aluísio Azevedo, 1857 to 1912, the literature of Brazil prepared for such a reorientation by the direct influence of the great Portuguese, Essa de Queiroch and Emile Zola, was definitely steered toward naturalism. In Aluísio Azevedo says Benedito Costa, one finds neither the poetry of José de Alencar, nor the delicacy, I should even say, artness of Macedo, nor the sentimental preciosity of Tonet, nor the subtle irony of Machado de Assiche. His phrase is brittle, lacking lyricism, tenderness, dreaminess, but it is dynamic, energetic, expressive, and at times sensual to the point of sweet delirium. Umulato, though it was the work of a youth in his early twenties, has been acknowledged as a solid, well-constructed example of Brazilian realism. There is a note of humor, as well as a lesson in criticism in the author's anecdote, told in his foreword to the fourth edition, about the provincial editor who advised the youthful author to give up writing and hire himself out on a farm. This was all the notice he received from his native province, Maranhão. Yet Azevedo grew to be one of the few Brazilian authors who supported himself by his pen. When Brazilian letters are better known in this nation, among Azevedo's work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the Livro de uma Sogra, the book of a mothering law. And when the literature of these United States is at last, if ever indeed, released from the childish, hypocritical, puritanic inhibitions forced upon it by quasi-official societies, we may even relish from among Azevedo's long shelf of novels such a sensuous product as Cortiço. I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Graçareñas-Canan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo Ferreiros' fulsome praise of it as the great American novel. For South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will of the wisp. Both Maria and Inocencia have been mentioned for that honor. There is a distinct basis for comparison between Inocencia and the more famous Spanish American tale from Colombia. Between these and Canaan, however, there is little similarity, if one overlooked the poetic atmosphere that glimmers all three. Aranya's masterpiece is a far broader conception than the other two. It adds to their lyricism an epic sweep inherent in the subject, and very soon felt in the treatment. It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly strict with a powerful realism. This should, however, connote no inept mingling of genres. The style seems to be called for by the very nature of the vast theme, that moment at which the native and the immigrant strain begin to merge in the land of the future, the promised land that the protagonists are destined never to enter, even as Moses himself, upon Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, beheld Canaan and died in the throes of the great vision. Canaan is of those novels that center about an enthralling idea. The type which devotes much attention to depictions of life and customs, to discussions upon present realities and ultimate purposes, is perhaps more frequent among Spanish and Portuguese Americans than among our own readers who are apt to be over insistent in their demands for swift, visible action. Yet, in the hands of a master, it possesses no less interest than the more obvious type of fiction, for ideas possess more life than the persons who are moved by them. The idea that carries Milkau from the old world to the new, is an ideal of human brotherhood, high purpose and dissatisfaction with the old, degenerate world. In the state of Espíritu Santo, where the German colonists are dominant, he plans a simple life that shall drink inspiration in the youth of a new, virgin continent. He falls in with another German, Lenz, whose outlook upon life is at first the very opposite to Milkau's blend of Christianity and a certain liberal socialism. The strange millier breeds in both an intellectual linger that vents itself in long discussions, in breeding contemplation, merges of the spirit. Milkau is gradually struck with something wrong in the settlement. Little by little it begins to dawn upon him that something of the old world hypocrisy, fraud and insincerity, is contaminating this supposedly virgin territory. Here he discovers no paradise, Allahusu, no natural man untainted by the ills of civilization. Grafft is a remnant as in any district of the world across the sea. Cruelty is a rife. His pity is aroused by the plight of Mary, a destitute servant who is betrayed by the son of her employers. Not only does the scamp desert her when she most needs his protection and acknowledgement, but he is silent when his equally vicious parents drive her forth to a life of intense hardship. She is spurned at every door and reduced to beggary. Her child is born under the most distressing circumstances and under conditions that strike the note of horror the infant is slain before her very eyes while she gazes helplessly on. Mary is accused of infanticide and since she lacks witnesses she is placed in a very difficult position. Moreover, the father of her child bends every effort to loosen the harshest measures of the community against her, whereupon Milkaou, whose heart is open to the sufferings of the universe, has another opportunity to behold man's inhumanity to woman. His pity turns to what pity is akin to. He affects her release from jail and together they go forth upon a journey that ends in the delirium of death. The promised land had proved the mirage, at least for the present. And it is upon this indecisive note that the book ends. Ferreiro's introduction, though short, is substantial and to the point. It is natural that he should have taken such a liking to the book, for Aranya's work is of intense interest to the reader who looks for psychological power, and Ferreiro himself is the exponent of history as psychology rather than as economic materialism. The critics, he says, will judge the literary merits of this novel. As a literary amateur I will point out among its qualities the beauty of its style and its descriptions, the purity of the psychological analysis, the depth of the thoughts and the reflections of which the novel is full, and among its faults a certain disproportion between the different part of the book and an ending which is too vague, indefinite and unexpected. But its literary qualities seem to me to be of secondary importance to the profound and incontrovertible idea that forms the kernel of the book. Here in Europe we are accustomed to say that modern civilization develops itself in America more freely than in Europe, for in the former country it has not to surmount the obstacle of an older society firmly established, as in the case of the latter. Because of this we call America the country of the young, and we consider the New World as the great force which decomposes the old European social organization. That idea is, as Ferreiro points out, an illusion due to distance. He points out too, that here is everywhere an old America struggling against a new one. And this is very curious, the New America which upsets traditions is formed above all by the European immigrants who seek a place for themselves in the country of their adoption, whereas the real Americans represent the conservative tendencies. Europe exerts an American society through its immigrants the same dissolving action which America exerts through its novelties and its example on the old civilization of Europe. The point is very well taken, and contains the germ of a great novel of the United States, and just as Canaan stands by itself in Brazilian literature, so might such a novel achieve permanence in our own. Ferreiro is quite right in indicating the great non-literary importance of the novel, though not all readers will agree with him as to the excessive vagueness of the end. Hardly any other type of ending would have befitted a novel that treats a transition of a landscape that dazzles and enthralls of possibilities that founder not through the malignance of fate, but through the stupidity of men. There is an epic swirl to the finale that reminds one of the disappearance of an ancient deity in the pillar of dust, for an uncommon man like Milkao an uncommon end was called for. Numerous questions are touched upon in the course of the leisurely narrative, everywhere opening up new vistas of thought. For Aranya is philosophically critically inclined. His training is cosmopolitan as his life has been. He knows the great Germans, Scandinavians, Belgians and Russians. His native exuberance has been tempered by a serenity that is the product of European influence. He is some 52 years of age, has served his nation at Christiania as minister, at the Hague and as a leader in the Allied cause. He is therefore an acknowledged and proven spokesman. The author of Canaan has done other things, among which this book, which has long been known in French and Spanish, stands out as a document that marks an epoch in Brazilian history as well as a stage in Brazilian literature. Whether it is the great American novel is of interest only to literary politicians and pigeon-holders. It is a great novel, whether of America or Europe, and that suffices for the lover of Belet. In considering the work of such writers as these and the authors represented in this little pioneer volume, one should bear continually in mind the many handicaps under which authorship labors in Portuguese and Spanish America. A small reading public, lack of publishers, widespread prevalence of illiteracy, instability of politics. Under the circumstances, it is not so much to be wondered at that the best work is of such a high average as that it was done at all. For in nations where education is so limited and illiteracy so prevalent, the manifold functions which in more highly developed nations are performed by many are perforced done by few. Hence, the spectacle in the new Spanish and Portuguese world, as in the old, of men and women who are at once journalists, novelists, dramatists, politicians, soldiers, poets and what not else. Such a versatility, often joined to a literary prolixity, no doubt serves to lower the artistic worth of works produced under such conditions. In connection with the special character of the tales included in the present sample of modern Brazilian short stories, particularly those by Machado de Assiche and Medeiros e Abuquerque, it is interesting to keep in mind the popularity of Poe and Hawthorne in South America. The introspection of these men, as of Demopassant and Kindred Spirits, appeals to a light characteristic of the Brazilians. Such inner seeking, however, such preoccupation with psychological problems does not often in these writers reach the point of morbidity which we have become accustomed to expect in the novels and tales of the Russians. Stories like the Attendance Confession are written with a refinement of thought as well as of language. They are not, as so much of Brazilian literature must perforce seem to the stranger's mind, exotic. They belong to the letters of the world by virtue of the human appeal of the subject and the mastery of their treatment. Chief among the writers he represented stands Joaquim Maria Machado de Assiche, 1839-1908. Born in Rio de Janeiro of poor parents he was early beset with difficulties. He soon found his way into surroundings where his literary tastes were awakened and where he came into contact with some of the leading spirits of the day. The noted literary historians of his country, Silvio Romero and João Ribeiro, in their Compendio de História da Literatura Brasileira, find the writing of his first period of little value. The next decade, from his 30th to the 40th year, is called transitional. With the year 1879, however, Machado de Assiche began a long phase of maturity that was to last for 30 years. It was during this fruitful period that Memórias Póstumas de Brasicubas, Quincas Borba, Histórias sem Data, Don Casmujo, Varias Histórias and other notable works were produced. The three tales by Machado de Assiche in this volume are translated from his Varias Histórias. That same bittersweet philosophy and gracious if penetrating irony which informed these tales are characteristic of his larger romances. Four volumes of poetry sustain his reputation as a poet. He is found, by Romero and Ribeiro, to be very correct and somewhat cold in his verse. He took little delight in nature and lacked the passionate, robust temperament that projects itself upon pages of art and beauty. In the best of his prose works, however, he penetrates as deep as any of his countrymen into the abyss of the human soul. The judgment of Veríssimo upon Machado de Assiche, the first somewhat from that of his distinguished compatriots, both because of the importance of Machado de Assiche to Brazilian literature and as an insight into Veríssimo's delightful critical style, I translate somewhat at length from that writer. With Varias Histórias, he says in his studies of Brazilian letters, Senhor Machado de Assiche published his fifteenth volume and his fifth collection of tales. To say that in our literature Machado de Assiche is a figure apart, that he stands with good reason first among our writers of fiction, that he possesses a rare faculty of assimilation and evolution which makes him a writer of the second romantic generation, always a contemporary, a modern, without on this account having sacrificed anything to the latest literary fashion or copied some brand new aesthetic, above all conserving his own distinct singular personality is but to repeat what has been said many times already. All these judgments are confirmed by his latest book, wherein may be noted the same impeccable correctness of language, the same firm grasp upon form, the same abundancy, force and originality of thought that make of him the only thinker among our writers of fiction, the same sad, bitter irony. After this there was published another book by Senhor Machado de Assiche, Yayá Garcia. Although this is really a new edition, we may well speak of it here, since the first published long before is no longer remembered by the public. Moreover, this book has the delightful and honest charm of being in the writer's first manner. But glad to understand at once this reference to Machado de Assiche's first manner. In this author more than once is justified the critical concept of the unity of works displayed by the great writers. All of Machado de Assiche is practically present in his early works. In fact, he did not change, he scarcely developed. He is the most individual, the most personal, the most himself of our writers. All the germs of this individuality that was to attain in Bráscubas, in Quincas Borba, in the Papéis Avulsos and in various histórias its maximum of virtuosity may be discovered in his first poems and in his earliest tales. His second manner, then, of which these books are the best example, is only the logical, natural, spontaneous development of his first, or rather, it is the first manner with less of the romantic and more of the critical tendencies. The distinguishing trait of Machado de Assiche is that he is, in our literature, an artist and a philosopher. Up to a short time ago, he was the only one answering to such a description. Those who come after him proceed consciously and unconsciously from him, some of them being mere worthless imitators. In this genre, if I am not misemploying that term, he remained without a peer. Add that this philosopher is a pessimist by temperament and by conviction, and you will have as complete a characterization as it is possible to design of so strong and complex a figure as his into strokes of the pen. Jaya Garcia, like He-Sui-Hei-Song and Elena, is a romantic account, perhaps the most romantic written by the author. Not only the most romantic, but perhaps the most emotional. In the books that followed, it is easy to see how the emotion is, one might say, systematically repressed by the sad irony of a disillusioned man's realism. Verissimo goes on to imply that such a work as this merits comparison with the humane books of Tolstoy, but this only on the surface. For at the bottom, it contains the author's misanthropy, a social, amiable misanthropy, curious about everything, interested in everything, what is, in the final analysis, a way of loving mankind without esteeming it. The Excellency with which the author of Jaya Garcia writes our language is proverbial. The highest distinction of the genius of Machado de Assiche in Brazilian literature is that he is the only truly universal writer we possess without seizing on that account to be really Brazilian. When the Brazilian Academy of Letters was founded in 1897, Machado de Assiche was unanimously elected president and held the position until his death. Oliveira Lima, who lectured at Harvard during the college season of 1915-1916, and who is himself one of the great intellectual forces of contemporary Brazil, has written of Machado de Assiche. By his extraordinary talent as writer, by his profound literary dignity, by the unity of a life that was entirely devoted to the cult of intellectual beauty, and by the prestige exerted about him by his work and by his personality, Machado de Assiche succeeded, despite a nature that was averse to acclaim and little inclined to public appearance, in being considered and respected as the first among his country's men of letters. The head, if that word cannot denote the idea, of a youthful literature which already possesses its traditions and cherishes above all its glories. His life was one of the most regulated and peaceful after he had given up active journalism, for like so many others, he began his career as a political reporter, paragraph-er and dramatic critic. Coelho Neto, on Selmo Hibas, 1864, is known to his countrymen as a professor of literature at Rio de Janeiro. His career has covered the fields of journalism, politics, education and fiction. Although his work is of an even worth, no doubt because of his unceasing productivity, he is reckoned by so exacting a critic as Veríssimo as one of Brazil's most important writers, one of the few in fact that will be remembered by posterity. Among his best liked stories are Death, The Federal Capital, Paradise, The Conquest and Mirage. Neto's short stories are very popular. At one time every other youth in Brazil was imitating his every mannerism. His particularly felicitous in his descriptions of tropical nature which team with glowing life and vivid picturesqueness. Coelho Neto is considered one of the chief writers of the modern epoch. He is really an idealist, writes Veríssimo, but an idealist who has drunk deeply of the strong, dangerous milk of French naturalism. He sees nature through his soul rather than his eyes, and has been much influenced by the mystics of Russia, Germany and Scandinavia. His style is derived chiefly from the Portuguese group of which S. A. J. K. Roich is the outstanding figure, and his language has been much affected by this attachment to the modern country. His chief stylistic quality is an epic note, tempered by a sentimental lyricism. In his book Le Romain au Brésil, the novel in Brazil, which I believe the author himself translated from the original Portuguese into French, Benedito Costa, after considering a Luís Vasevedo as the exponent of Brazilian naturalism, and the episthist of the racist sexual instincts, turns to Coelho Neto's neo-romanticism as the eternal praise of nature, the incessant exaggerated exaltation of the landscape. In Neto he perceives the most Brazilian, the least European, of the Republic's authors. One may say of him what Ten said of Bausac, a sort of literary elephant capable of bearing prodigious burdens but heavy-footed, and in fact he reveals a great resemblance to Bausac, a relative Bausac for the exclusive use of a people, but of Bausac, nonetheless. Despite his lack of ideas, his mixture of archaisms, neologisms, his exuberance, his slow development of plots, his lack of proportion, noticeably, naturally, and his longer works that are in his short fiction, he stands preeminent as a patron of the nation's intellectual youth, and as the romancer of its opulent imagination. Medeiros Albuquerque is considered by some critics to be the leading exponent in the country of the manner of the Mopassant, enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar Olympo. He has been director general of public instruction in Rio de Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco. With the surprising versatility of so many South Americans, he has achieved a reputation as poet, novelist, dramatist, publicist, journalist, and philosopher. The part that women have played in the progress of the South American republics is as interesting as it is little known. The name of the world's largest river, the Amazon, or more exactly speaking the Amazons, stands as a last in tribute to the bravery of the early women whom the explorer Orelana encountered during his conquest of the mighty flood. For he named the river in honor of the tribes fighting heroines. Centuries later, when one by one the provinces of South America rose to liberate themselves from the Spanish yoke, the women again played a noble part in the various revolutions. The statue in Colombia to Policarpa Salavarieta is but a symbol of South American gratitude to a host of women who fought side by side with their husbands during the trying days of the early 19th century. One of them, Manuela La Tucumana, was even made an officer in the Argentine army. If women, however, have enshrined themselves in the patriotic annals of the southern republics, they have shown that they are no less the companions of men in the more or less agreeable arts of peace. When one considers the great percentage of illiteracy that still prevails in southern America, and the inferior intellectual position which for years has been the lot of women, particularly in the Spanish and Portuguese nations, it is surprising that women's prominence in the literary world should be what it is. The name of the original 17th century spirit, known as Sor Inés de la Cruz in Mexico, is part of Spanish literature. Only recently has she been indicated as her nation's first folklorist and feminist. Her poems have found their way into the anthologies of universal poetry. The most distinguished Spanish poetess of the 19th century, Gertrude Gómez de Avelaneda, was a Cuban by birth, going later to Spain, where she was readily received as one of the nation's leading literary lights. Her poetry is remarkable for its virile passion. Her novel, Sab, has been called the Spanish Uncle Tom's Cabin for its stirring protest against slavery and its idealization of the oppressed race. She was a woman of striking beauty, yet so vigorous in her work and the prosecution of it that one facetious critic was led to explain. A woman is a good deal of a man. But South America has its native candidate for the title of Spanish Uncle Tom's Cabin, and this too is the work of a woman. Clorinda Matos Aves Inido, Birds Without a Nest, is by one of Peru's most talented women and exposes the disgraceful exploitation of the Indians by conscienceless citizens and priests who had sunk beneath their holy calling. It seems, indeed, that fiction as a whole in Peru has been left to the pens of the women. Such names as Joana Manuel Guiriti de Belsú, Clorinda Matos, and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonero stand for what it is best in the South American novel. The epoch in which these women wrote, late 19th century, and the natural feminine tendency to put the house in order, whether it be the domestic or the national variety, led to such stories as Carboneros Las Consequencias, El Conspirador, and Blanca Sol. The first of these is an indictment of the Peruvian vice of gambling. The second throws an interesting light upon the origin of much of the internal strife of South America, and portrays a revolution brought on by the personal disappointment of a politician. Blanca Sol has been called a Peruvian Madame Bovary. Although Brazil has not yet produced any amazons of poetry or fiction to stand beside such names as Sorrines de la Cruz, or Gertrude Gomes de Avaloneda, it has contributed some significant names to the women writers of Latin America. Not least among these is Carmen Dolores, pen name of Emilia Moncurvo Bandeira de Melo, who was born in 1852 at Rio de Janeiro, and died in 1910 after achieving a wide reputation in the field of the short story Novel in Feuilleton. In addition to these activities, she made herself favorably known in the press of Rio, São Paulo, and Pernambuco. Her career started with the novel Confession. Other works are The Struggle, A Country Drama, and Brazilian Legends. The story in this volume is taken from a collection entitled The Complex Whole. The present selection of tales makes no pretense at completeness, finality, or infallibility of choice. This little book is, so to speak, merely a modest sample case. Some of the tales first appeared in English in the Boston Evening Transcript and the Stratford Journal Boston, to which organs I am indebted for permission to reprint them. Isaac Goldberg, Roxbury, Massachusetts. End of preface. Section 1 of Brazilian Tales. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Linny. Brazilian Tales by various authors. Translated by Isaac Goldberg. Section 1. The Attendance Confession by Joaquim Maria Machado-Jaciche, first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. So it really seems to you that what happened to me in 1860 is worthwhile writing down? Very well. I'll tell you the story, but on the condition that you do not divulge it before my death. You will not have to wait long, a week at most. I'm a marked man. I could have told you the story of my whole life, which holds many other interesting details. But for that there would be needed time, courage and paper. There is plenty of paper indeed, but my courage is at low ebb. And as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared to the life of a candle flame. Soon tomorrow's sun will rise, the demon's sun, as impenetrable with life itself. So, goodbye, my dear sir. Read this, and bear me no ill will. Pardon me those things that will appear evil to you, and do not complain too much if there is exhale the disagreeable odor, which is not exactly that of the rose. You asked me for a human document. Here it is. Ask me for neither the Empire of the Great Mogul nor a photograph of the Maccabees, but request, if you will, my dead men's shoes. And I will them to you, and no other. You already know that this took place in 1860. The year before, about the month of August, at the age of 42, I had become a theologian. That is, I copied the theological studies of a priest at Niteroi, an old college chum, who thus tactfully gave me my board in lodging. In that same month of August, 1859, he received the letter from the vicar of a small town in the interior, asking if he knew of an intelligent, discreet, and patient person who would be willing, in return for generous wages, to serve as a tendon to the invalid colonel Philisburg. The priest proposed that I take the place, and I accepted it eagerly, for I was tired of copying Latin quotations and ecclesiastic formulas. First I went to Rio de Janeiro, to take leave of a brother who lived at the capital, and from there I departed for the little village of the interior. When I arrived there, I heard bad news concerning the colonel. He was pictured to me as a disagreeable, harsh, exacting fellow. Nobody could endure him, not even his own friends. He had used more attendance than medicines. In fact, he had broken the faces of two of them. But to all this I replied that I had no fear of persons in good health, still less of invalids. So, after first visiting the vicar, who confirmed all that I had heard, and recommended to me charity and forbearance, I turned toward the colonel's residence. I found him on the veranda of his house, stretched out on a chair, and suffering greatly. He received me fairly well. At first he examined me silently, piercing me with his two fill-in eyes. Then a kind of malicious smile spread over his features, which were rather hard. Finally he declared to me that all the attendants he had ever engaged in his service hadn't been worth a button. That they slapped too much, were impudent, and spent their time courting the servants. Two of them were even thieves. And you, are you a thief? No, sir. Then he asked me my name. Scarcely had I uttered it when he made a gesture of astonishment. Your name is Colombo? No, sir. My name is Procopio José Gomes Valongo. Valongo? He came to the conclusion that this was no Christian name, and proposed thenceforth to call me simply Procopio. I replied that it should be just as he pleased. If I recall this incident, it is not only because it seems to me to give a good picture of the colonel, but also to show you that my reply made a very good impression upon him. The next day he told the vicar so, adding that he had never had a more sympathetic attendant. The fact is, we lived a regular honeymoon that lasted one week. From the dawn of the eighth day I knew the life of my predecessors, a dog's life. I no longer slept. I no longer thought of anything. I was showered with insults and laughed at them from time to time with an air of resignation and submission. For I had discovered that this was a way of pleasing him. His impertinences proceeded as much from his malady as from his temperament. His illness was of the most complicated. He suffered from aneurysm, rheumatism, and three or four minor factions. He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old, had been accustomed to having everybody at his back and call. That he was surly one could well forgive, but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to leave. Only the opportunity was lacking. But that came soon enough. One day when I was a bit late in giving him a massage, he took his cane and struck me with it two or three times. That was the last straw. I told him on the spot that I was through with him and I went to pack my trunk. He came later to my room. He begged me to remain. Assured me that there wasn't anything to be angry at. That I must excuse the ill-humoredness of old age. He insisted so much that I agreed to stay. I am nearing the end, Procopio, he said to me that evening. I can't live much longer. I am upon the verge of the grave. You will go to my burial, Procopio. Under no circumstances will I excuse you. You shall go. You shall pray over my tomb. And if you don't, he added, laughing. My ghost will come at night and pull you by the legs. Do you believe in souls of the other world, Procopio? Nonsense. And why don't you, you blockhead? He replied passionately, with distended eyes. That is how he was in his peaceful intervals. What he was during his attacks of anger, you may well imagine. He hit me no more with his cane, but his insults were the same, if not worse. With time I became hardened. I no longer heated anything. I was an ignoramus, a camel, a bumpking, an idiot, a loggerhead. I was everything. It must further be understood that I alone was favoured with these pretty names. He had no relatives. There had been a nephew, but he had died of consumption. As the friends, those who came, now and then, to flatter him and indulge his whims, made him but a short visit, five or ten minutes at the most. I alone was always present to receive his dictionary of insults. More than once I resolved to leave him. But as the vicar would exhort me not to abandon the colonel, I always yielded in the end. Not only were our relations becoming very much strained, but I was in a hurry to get back to Rio de Janeiro. At forty-two years of age one does not easily accustom himself to perpetual seclusion with a brittle, snarling old enveloped in the depths of a remote village. Just to give you an idea of my isolation, let it suffice to inform you that I didn't even read the newspapers. Outside of some more or less important piece of news that was brought to the colonel, I knew nothing of what was doing in the world. I therefore yearned to get back to Rio at the first opportunity, even at the cost of breaking with the vicar. And I may as well add, since I am here making a general confession that having spent nothing of my wages, I was itching to dissipate them at the capital. Very probably my chance was approaching. The colonel was rapidly getting worse. He made his will to notary receiving almost as many insults as did I. The invalid's treatment became more strict. Short intervals of peace and rest became rarer than ever for me. Already I had lost the meager measure of pity that made me forget the old invalid's excesses. Within me there ceased the cauldron of aversion and hatred. At the beginning of the month of August I decided definitely to leave. The vicar and the doctor finally accepting my explanations asked me but a few days more service. I gave them a month. At the end of that time I would depart whatever might be the condition of the invalid. The vicar promised to find a substitute for me. You'll see now what happened. On the evening of the twenty-fourth of August the colonel had a violent attack of anger. He struck me. He called me the vilest names. He threatened to shoot me. Finally he threw in my face a plate of porridge that was too cold for him. The plates struck the wall and broke into a thousand fragments. You pay me for it, you thief! he bellowed. For a long time he grumbled. Towards eleven o'clock he gradually fell asleep. While he slept I took a book out of my pocket. A translation of an old darling cool romance which I had found lying about and began to read it in his room at a small distance from his bed. I was to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine. But whether it was due to fatigue or to the influence of the book I too before reaching the second page fell asleep. The cries of the colonel awoke me with a start. In an instant I was up. He, apparently in a delirium, continued to utter the same cries. Finally he seized his water bottle and threw it at my face. I could not get out of the way in time. The bottle hit me in the left cheek and the pain was so acute that I almost lost consciousness. With a leap I rushed upon the invalid. I tightened my hands around his neck. He struggled several moments. I strangled him. When I beheld that he no longer breathed I stepped back in terror. I cried out but nobody heard me. Then approaching the bed once more I shook him so as to bring him back to life. It was too late. The aneurysm had burst and the colonel was dead. I went into the adjoining room and for two hours I did not dare to return. It is impossible for me to express all that I felt during that time. It was intense to perfection. A kind of vague and vacant delirium. It seemed to me that I saw faces grinning on the walls. I heard muffled voices, the cries of the victim, the cries uttered before the struggle and during its wild moments continued to reverberate within me. And the year in whatever direction I turned seemed to shake with convulsions. Do not imagine that I am inventing pictures or aiming at a verbal style. I swear to you that I heard distinctly voices that were crying at me. Murderer, murderer! All was quiet in the house. The tick, tick of the clock, very even, slow, dryly metrical, increased the silence and solitude. I put my ear to the door of the room in hope of hearing a groan, a word, an insult, anything that will be a sign of life that might bring back peace to my conscience. I was ready to let myself be struck ten, twenty, a hundred times by the colonel's hand. But nothing, all was silent. I began to pace the room aimlessly. I sat down. I brought my hands despairingly to my head. I repented, ever having come to the place. Cursed be the hour in which I ever accepted such a position, I cried. And I flamed with resentment against the priest of Niteroi, against the doctor, the vicar, against all those who had procured the place for me and forced me to remain there so long. They, too, I convinced myself, were accomplices in my crime. As the silence finally terrified me, I opened the window in the hope of hearing at least the murmuring of the wind. But no wind was blowing. The night was peaceful. The stars were sparkling within difference of those who removed their heads before a passing funeral procession and continued to speak of other things. I remained at the window for some time, my elbows on the sill, my gaze seeking to penetrate the night, forcing myself to make a mental summary of my life so that I might escape the present agony. I believe it was only then that I thought clearly about the penalty of my crime. I saw myself already being accused and threatened with dire punishment. From this moment fear complicated my feeling of remorse. I felt my hair stand on end. A few minutes later I saw three or four human shapes spying at me from the terrace where they seemed to be waiting in ambush. I withdrew. The shapes vanished into the air. It had been an hallucination. Before daybreak I bandaged the wounds that I had received in the face. Then only did I pluck up enough courage to return to the other room. Twice I started, only to turn back. But it must be done, so I entered. Even then I did not at first go to the bed. My legs shook, my heart pounded. I thought of flight, but that would have been a confession of the crime. It was, on the contrary, very important for me to hide all traces of it. I approached the bed. I looked at the corpse with its widely distended eyes and its smile of gaping as if uttering the eternal reproach of the centuries. Cain, what has thou done with thy brother? I discovered on the neck the marks of my nails. I buttoned the shirt to the top and threw the bed cover up to the dead man's chin. Then I called the servant and told him that the colonel had died towards mourning. I sent him to notify the vicar and the doctor. The first idea that came to me was to leave as soon as possible under the pretext that my brother was ill. And in reality I had received, several days before, from he you, a letter telling me that he was not at all well. But I considered that my immediate departure might arouse suspicion and I decided to wait. I laid out the corpse myself with the assistance of an old, nearsighted negro. I remained continually in the room of the dead. I trembled, lest something out of the way should be discovered. I wanted to assure myself that no mistrust could be read upon the faces of the others. But I did not dare to look any person in the eye. Everything made me impatient, the going and coming of those who, on tiptoe, crossed the room, their whisperings, the ceremonies and the prayers of the vicar. The hour having come, I closed the coffin, but with trembling hands, so trembling that somebody noticed it and commented upon it aloud with pity. Poor Procopio, despite what he has suffered from his master, he is strongly moved. It sounded like irony to me. I was anxious to have it all over with. We went out. Once in the street, the passing from semi-obscurity to daylight dazed me and I staggered. I began to fear that it would no longer be possible for me to conceal the crime. I kept my eyes steadily fixed upon the ground and took my place in the procession. When all was over, I breathed once more. I was at peace with men, but I was not at peace with my conscience. And the first nights, naturally, I spent in restlessness and affliction. Need I tell you that I hasten to return to Rio de Janeiro and that I dwelt there in terror and suspense, although far removed from the scene of my crime? I never smiled. I scarcely spoke. I ate very little. I suffered hallucinations and nightmares. Let the dead rest in peace, they would say to me. It is out of all reason to show so much melancholy. And I was happy to find how people interpreted my symptoms and praised the dead man highly, calling him a good soul, certainly in truth, but with the heart of gold. And as I spoke in such wise, I convinced myself, at least for a few moments at a time. Another interesting phenomenon was taking place within me. I tell it to you because you will perhaps make some useful deduction from it. And that was, although I had very little religion in me, I had a mass song for the eternal rest of the colonel at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. I sent out no invitations to it. I did not whisper a word of it to anybody. I went there alone. I knelt during the whole service and made many signs of the cross. I paid the priest double and distributed alms at the door, all in the name of the deceased. I wished to deceive nobody. The proof of this lies in the fact that I did all this without letting any other know. To complete this incident, I may add that I never mentioned the colonel without repeating, May his soul rest in peace. And I told several funny anecdotes about him, some amusing caprices of his. About a week after my arrival at hew, I received a letter from the vicar. He announced that the will of the colonel had been opened and that I was there designated as his soul heir. Imagine my stupefaction. I was sure that I had read wrongly. I showed it to my brother, to friends. They all read the same thing. It was there, in black and white. I was really the soul heir of the colonel. Then I suddenly thought that this was a trap to catch me. But then I considered that there were other ways of arresting me if the crime had been discovered. Moreover, I knew the vicar's honesty. And I was sure that he would not be a party to such a plan. I re-read the letter five times, ten times, a hundred times. It was true. I was the colonel's soul heir. How much was he worth, my brother asked me. I don't know. But I know that he was very wealthy. Really, he's shown that he was a very true friend to you. He certainly was. He was. Thus, by a strange irony of fate, all the colonel's wealth came into my hands. At first I thought of refusing the legacy. It seemed odious to take a sue of that inheritance. It seemed worse than the reward of a hired assassin. For three days this thought obsessed me. But more and more I was thrust against this consideration that my refusal would not fail to awake suspicion. Finally, I settled upon a compromise. I would accept the inheritance and would distribute it in small sums secretly. This was not merely scruple on my part. It was also the desire to redeem my crime by virtuous deeds. And it seemed the only way to recover the inheritance. I would cover my peace of mind and feel that accounts were straight. I made hurried preparations and left. As I neared the little village, the sad event returned obstinately to my memory. Everything about the place as I looked at it once again suggested tragic deeds. At every turning the road I seemed to see the ghost of the colonel, Lum. And despite myself, I evoked in my imagination his cries, his struggles, his looks on that horrible night of the crime. Crime or struggle. Really, it was rather a struggle. I had been attacked, I had defended myself, and in self-defense it had been an unfortunate struggle, a genuine tragedy. This idea gripped me and I reviewed all the abuse he had heaped upon me. I counted the blows, the names. It was not the colonel's fault that I knew well. It was his affliction that made him so peevish and even wicked. But I pardoned all, everything. The worst of it was the end of that fatal night. I also considered that, in any case, the colonel had not long to live. His days were numbered. Did not he himself feel that? Didn't he say every now and then, how much longer have I to live? Two weeks or one, perhaps less? This was not life. It was slow agony if one may so name the continual martyrdom of that poor man. And who knows, who can say that the struggle and his death were not simply a coincidence. That was, after all, quite possible. It was even most probable. Careful weighing of the matter show that it couldn't have been otherwise. At length, this idea, too, engraved itself upon my mind. Something tugged at my heart as I entered the village. I wanted to run back, but I dominated my emotions, and I pressed forward. I was received with a shower of congratulations. The vicar communicated to me the particulars of the will, enumerated the peo's gifts, and, as he spoke, praised the Christian forbearance and the faithfulness which I had shown in my care of the deceased, who, despite his temper and brutality, had so well demonstrated his gratitude. Certainly, I said, looking nervously around, I was astounded. Everybody praised my conduct, such patience, such devotion. The first formalities of the inventory detained me for a while. I chose a solicitor. Things followed their course in regular fashion. During this time there was much talk of the colonel. People came and told me tales about him. But, without observing the priest's moderation, I defended the memory of the colonel. I recalled his good qualities, his virtues. Had he not been austere, they would interrupt nonsense, his dead, and it's all over now, but he was a regular demon. And they would cite incidents and relate the colonel's perversities, some of which were nothing less than extraordinary. Need I confess it, at first I listened to all this talk with great curiosity, then a queer pleasure penetrated my heart, a pleasure from which sincerely I tried to escape, and I continued to defend the colonel. I explained him. I attributed much of the fault-finding to local animosity. I admitted, yes, I admitted, that he had been a trifle exacting, somewhat violent. Somewhat? Why, he was as furious as a snake! exclaimed the barber. And all, the collector, the apothecary, the clerk, all were of the same opinion. And they would start to relate other anecdotes. They reviewed the entire life of the deceased. The old folks took particular delight in recalling the cruelties of its youth. And that queer pleasure, intimate, mute, insidious, grew within me. A sort of moral tapeworm, his coils I tore out in vain, for they would immediately form again and take firmer hold than ever. The formalities of the inventory afforded me a little relief. Moreover, public opinion was so unanimously unfavorable to the colonel, that little by little the place lost the lugubrious aspect that had at first struck me. At last I entered into possession of the legacy, which I converted into lend titles and cash. Several months had elapsed, and the idea of distributing the inheritance in charity and peers' donations was by no means so strong as it had at first being. It even seemed to me that this would be sheer affectation. I revised my initial plan. I gave away several insignificant sums to the poor. I presented the village church with a few new ornaments. I gave several thousand francs to the sacred house of mercy, etc. I did not forget to erect a monument upon the colonel's grave, a very simple monument, all marble, the work of a Neapolitan sculptor who remained at Riyu until 1866, and who has since died, I believe, in Paraguay. Years have gone by. My memory has become vague and unreliable. Sometimes I think of the colonel, but without feeling again the terrors of those early days, all the doctors to whom I have described his afflictions have been unanimous as regards the inevitable end in store for the invalid, and were indeed surprised that he should so long have resisted. It is just possible that I may have, and voluntarily, exaggerated the description of his various symptoms. But the truth is that he was sure of sudden death, even had this fatality not occurred. Goodbye, my dear sir. If you deem these notes not totally devoid of value, reward me for them with a marble tomb, and place there for my epitaph this variant, which I have made of the Divine Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are they who possess, for they shall be consoled. The Fortune Teller by Joaquin Maria Machado Jacich Hamlet observes to Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. This was the self-same explanation that was given by beautiful Rita to her lover, Camilo, on a certain Friday of November 1869, when Camilo laughed at her for having gone the previous evening to consult a Fortune Teller. The only difference is that she made her explanation in other words. Laugh, laugh. That's just like you, men. You don't believe in anything. Well, let me tell you, I went there and she guessed the reason for my coming before I ever spoke a word. Scarcely had she begun to lay out the cards when she said to me, the lady likes a certain person. I confessed that it was so, and then she continued to rearrange the cards in various combinations, finally telling me that I was afraid you would forget me, but that there were no grounds for my fear. She was wrong, interrupted Camilo with a laugh. Don't say that, Camilo. If you only realized in what anguish I went there, all on account of you. You know, I've told you before. Don't laugh at me. Don't poke fun at me. Camilo seized her hands and gazed into her eyes earnestly and long. He swore that he loved her ever so much that her fears were childish. In any case, should she ever harbor a fear, the best Fortune Teller to consult was he himself. Then he reproved her, saying that it was imprudent to visit such houses. Vilela might learn of it, and then... Impossible. I was exceedingly careful when I entered the place. Where's the house? Near here, on Guadavella Street. Nobody was passing by at the time. Rest easy. I'm not a fool. Camilo left again. Do you really believe in such things? He asked. It was at this point that she translated Hamlet into everyday speech, assuring her lover that there was many a true, mysterious thing in this world. If he was skeptical, let him have patience. One thing, however, was certain. The card reader had guessed everything. What more could he desire? The best proof was that at this moment she was at ease and content. He was about to speak, but he restrained himself. He did not wish to destroy her illusions. He too, when a child, and even later, had been superstitious, filled with an arsenal of beliefs which his mother had instilled, and which had disappeared by the time he reached twenty. The day on which he rid himself of all this parasitic vegetation, leaving behind only the trunk of religion, he wrapped his superstition and his religion, which had both been inculcated by his mother, in the same doubt, and soon arrived at a single, total negation. Camilo believed in nothing. Why? He could not have answered. He had not a solitary reason. He was content simply to deny everything. But I expressed myself ill, for to deny is, in a sense, to affirm, and he did not formulate his unbelief. Before the great mystery, he simply shrugged his shoulders and went on. The lovers parted in good spirits, he more happy than she. Rita was sure that she was loved, but Camilo was not only sure that she loved him, but saw how she trembled for him, and even took risks running to fortune-tellers. However much he had reproved her for this, he could not help feeling flattered by it. Their secret meeting-place was in the old Barbono Street, at the home of a woman that came from Rita's province. Rita went off through Mangaida Street, in the direction of Batafogo, where she resided. Camilo entered Guadavella Street, keeping his eye open as he passed for the home of the card reader. Vilela, Camilo and Rita. Three names, one adventure, and no explanation of how it all began. Let us proceed to explain. The first two were friends since earliest childhood. Vilela had entered the Magistracy. Camilo found employment with the government, against the will of his father, who desired him to embrace the medical profession. But his father had died, and Camilo preferred to be nothing at all, until his mother had procured him a departmental position. At the beginning of the year 869, Vilela returned from the interior, where he had married a silly beauty. He abandoned the Magistracy and came hither to open a lawyer's office. Camilo had secured a house for him near Batafogo and had welcomed him home. Is this the gentleman, exclaimed Rita, offering Camilo her hand? You can imagine how highly my husband thinks of you. He was always talking about you. Camilo and Vilela looked at each other tenderly. They were true friends. Afterwards, Camilo confessed to himself that Vilela's wife did not at all belly the enthusiastic letters her husband had written to him. Really, she was most prepossessing, lively in her movements, her eyes burning, her mouth plastic and picklingly inquiring. Rita was a trifle older than both the men. She was 30, Vilela 29, and Camilo 26. The grave bearing of Vilela gave him the appearance of being much older than his wife, while Camilo was but a child in moral and practical life. He possessed neither experience nor intuition. The three became closely bound. Propinquity bred intimacy. Shortly afterwards, Camilo's mother died, and in this catastrophe, for such it was, the other two showed themselves to be genuine friends of his. Vilela took charge of the interment, of the church services, and the settlement of the affairs of the deceased. Rita dispensed consolation, and none could do it better. Just how this intimacy between Camilo and Rita grew to love, he never knew. The truth is that he enjoyed passing the hours at her side. She was his spiritual nurse, almost a sister, but most of all she was a woman and beautiful. The aroma of femininity, this is what he yearned for in her, and about her seeking to incorporate it into himself. They read the same books, they went together to the theater or for walks, he taught her cards and chess, and they played of nights. She badly, he to make himself agreeable, but little less badly. Thus much, as far as external things are concerned. And now came personal intimacies, the timorous eyes of Rita, that so often sought his own consulting them before they questioned those of her own husband, the touches of cold hands, and unwanted communion. On one of his birthdays he received from Vilela a costly cane, and from Rita a hastily penciled ordinary note expressing good wishes. It was then that he learned to read within his own heart. He could not tear his eyes away from the missive. Commonplace words it is true, but there are sublime commonplaces, or at least delightful ones. The old shades in which for the first time you rode with your beloved, snuggled together, is as good as the chariot of Apollo, such as men, and such are the circumstances that surround him. Camus sincerely wished to flee the situation, but it was already beyond his power. Rita, like a serpent, was charming him, winding her coils about him. She was crushing his bones, darting her venomous fangs into his lips. He was helpless, overcome. Vaccation, fear, remorse, desire, all this he felt in a strange confusion. But the battle was short, and the victory deliriously intoxicating. Farewell, all scrupple. The shoe now fitted snugly enough upon the foot, and there they were both, launched upon the high road, arm in arm, joyfully treading the grass and the gravel, without suffering anything more than lonesomeness when they were away from each other. As to Vilela, his confidence in his wife and his esteem for his friend continued the same as before. One day, however, Camus received an anonymous letter, which called him immoral and perfidious, and warned him that his adventure was known to all. Camus took fright, and, in order to ward off suspicion, began to make his visits to Vilela's house more rare. The letter asked him the reason for his prolonged absence. Camus answered that the cause was a youthful flirtation. Simplicity evolved into cunning. Camus' absences became longer and longer. And then his visit seized entirely. Into discourse there may have entered a little self-respect, the idea of diminishing his obligations to the husband in order to make his own actions appear less treacherous. It was at this juncture that Rita, uncertain and in fear, ran to the fortune teller to consult her upon the real reason for Camus' actions. As we have seen, the card reader restored the wife's confidence, and the young man reproved her for having done what she did. A few weeks passed. Camus received two or three more anonymous letters, written with such passionate anger that they could not have been prompted by mere regard for Virtue. Surely they came from some violent rival of his. In this opinion Rita concurred, formulating in ill-composed words of her own, this thought, Virtue is indolent and niggardly, wasting neither time nor paper, and the only self-interest is alert and prodigal. But this did not help to ease Camus. He now feared less the anonymous writer should inform Vilella, in which case the catastrophe would follow fast and implacably. Rita agreed that this was possible. Very well, she said, give me the envelopes in which the letter came, so that I may compare the handwriting with that of the mail which comes to him. If any arrives with writing resembling the anonymous script, I'll keep it and tear it up. But no such letter appeared. A short time after this, however, Vilella commenced to grow grave, speaking very little, as if something weighed upon his mind. Rita hurried to communicate the change to her lover, and they discussed the matter earnestly. Her opinion was that Camus should renew his visits to their home and sound her husband. It might be that Vilella would confide to him some business worry. With this Camus disagreed. To appear after so many months was to confirm the suspicions and initiations of the anonymous letters. It was better to be very careful, to give each other up for several weeks. They arranged means for communicating with each other in case of necessity and separated in tears. On the following day Camus received at his department this letter from Vilella. Come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. It was past noon. Camus left at once. As he reached the street it occurred to him that it would have been much more natural for Vilella to have called him to his office. Why to his house? All this betokened the very urgent matter. Moreover, whether it was reality or illusion it seemed to Camus that the letter was written in a trembling hand. He sought to establish a connection between all these things and the news Rita had brought him the night before. Come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. He repeated. His eyes staring at the note. In his mind's eye he beheld the climax of a drama. Rita cowed, weeping. Vilella indignant, seizing his span and dashing off the letter certain that he, Camus, would answer in person waiting to kill him as he entered. Camus shuddered with terror. Then he smiled weakly. In any event the idea of drawing back was repugnant to him. So he continued on his way. As he walked it occurred to him to step into his rooms. He might find there a message from Rita explaining everything but he found nothing. Nobody. He returned to the street and the thought that they had been discovered drew every moment more convincing. Yes, the author of the previous anonymous communications must have denounced him to the husband. Perhaps by now Vilella knew all. The very suspension of his calls without any apparent reason with the flimsiest of pretexts would confirm everything else. Camus walked hastily along agitated, nervous. He did not read the letter again but the words hovered persistently before his eyes or else, which was even worse, they seemed to be murmured into his ears by the voice of Vilella himself. Come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. Spoken thus by the voice of the other they seemed pregnant with mystery and menace. Come immediately. Why? It was now nearly one o'clock. Camus's agitation walks greater with each passing moment. So clearly did he imagine what was about to take place that he began to believe it a reality to see it before his very eyes. Yes, without a doubt, he was afraid. He even considered arming himself thinking that if nothing should happen he would lose nothing by this useful precaution. But at once he rejected the idea angry with himself and hastened his step towards Carioca Square there to take a tilbury. He arrived, entered to drive to be off at full speed. The sooner the better, he thought, I can't stand this uncertainty. But the very sound of the horses clattering hooves increased his agitation. Time was flying and he would be face to face with danger soon enough. When they had come almost to the end of Guardavella Street the tilbury had to come to a stop. The thoroughfare was blocked by a coach that had broken down. After five minutes had gone by he noticed that there at his left at the very foot of the tilbury was the fortune teller's house the very same as Rita had once consulted. Never as at this moment had he so desired to believe in card reading he looked closer saw that the windows were closed while all the others on the street were opened filled with folks curious to see what was the matter. It looked for all the world like the dwelling of indifferent fate. Camillo leaned back in his seat so as to shut all this from view. His excitement was intense extraordinary and from the deep hidden recesses of his mind there began to emerge specters of early childhood old beliefs banished superstitions. The coachman proposed another route he shook his head and said that he would wait. He leaned forward to get a better look at Rita's house then he made a gesture of self ridicule it had entered his mind to consult the fortune teller who seemed to be hovering over him far far above with vast ash colored wings she disappeared reappeared and then her image was lost then in a few moments the ash colored wings stirred again nearer flying about him in narrowing circles in the street men were shouting dragging away the coach now push that's it now in a short while the obstruction was removed Camillo closed his eyes trying to think of other things but the voice of Rita's husband whispered into his ears the words of the letter come immediately and he could behold the anguish of the drama he trembled the house seemed to look right at him his feet instinctively moved Camillo found himself before a long opaque veil he thought rapidly of the inexplicability of so many things the voice of his mother was repeating to him a host of extraordinary happenings and the very sentence of the Prince of Denmark kept echoing within him there are more things in heaven and earth her ratio than are dreamt of in our philosophy what could he lose by it if he jumped out to the pavement he told the driver to wait for him and hastened into the entry ascending the stairs there was little light the stairs were worn away from the many feet that had sought them the banister was smooth and sticky but he saw and felt nothing he stumbled up the stairs and knocked nobody appearing he was about to go down but it was too late now curiosity was whipping his blood and his heart beat with violent throbs he turned back to the door three times he beheld a woman it was the card reader Kamilu said that he had come to consult her and she bade him enter thence they climbed to the attic by a staircase even worse than the first and buried in deeper gloom at the top there was a garret ill-lighted by a small window old furniture, somber walls and a near of poverty augmented rather than destroyed the prestige of the occupant the fortune teller told him to be seated before the table and she sat down on the opposite side with her back to the window so that whatever little light came from without fell full upon Kamilu's face she opened the drawer and took out a pack of worn filthy cards while she rapidly shuffled them she peered at him closely not so much with a direct gaze as from under her eyes she was a woman of forty Italian, thin and swarthy with large, sharp, cunning eyes she placed three cards upon the table and said let us first see what has brought you here the gentleman has just received a severe shock and is in great fear Kamilu astonished nodded affirmatively and he wishes to know she continued whether anything will happen to him or not to me and to her he explained excitedly the fortune teller did not smile she simply told him to wait she took the cards hastily once more and shuffled them with her long tapering fingers whose nails were so long and unclean from neglect she shuffled them well once, twice, thrice then she began to lay them out Kamilu's eyes were riveted upon her in anxious curiosity the cards tell me Kamilu leaned forward to drink in her words one by one then she told him to fear nothing nothing would happen to him or to the other he, the third, was aware of not nevertheless great caution was indispensable envy and rivalry were at work she spoke to him of the love that bound them of Rita's beauty Kamilu was bewildered the fortune teller stopped talking gathered the cards and locked them in the drawer the lady has restored peace to my spirit he said offering her his hand across the table and pressing that of the card reader she arose laughing go, she said go, ragazu innamorato and arising she touched his head with her index finger Kamilu shuddered as if it were the hand of one of the original Sibyls and he too arose the fortune teller went to the bureau upon which lay a plate of raisins took a cluster of them and commenced to eat them showing two rows of teeth that were as white as her nails were black even in this common action the woman possessed in there all her own Kamilu anxious to leave was at a loss how much to pay he did not know her fee raisins cost money he said at length taking out his pocket book how much do you want to send for ask your heart Kamilu took out a note for ten milhays and gave it to her the eyes of the card readers sparkled her usual fee was two milhays I can see easily that the gentleman loves his lady very much and well he may for she loves the gentleman very deeply go, go in peace with your mind at ease and take care as you descend the staircase it's dark don't forget your head the fortune teller had already placed the note in her pocket and accompanied him down the stairs chatting rather gaily at the bottom of the first flight Kamilu bid her goodbye and ran down the stairs that led to the street while the card reader rejoicing in her large fee turned back to the garret humming a barker roll Kamilu found a tilbury waiting for him the street was now clear he entered and the driver whipped his horse into a fast trot to Kamilu everything had now changed for the better and his affairs assumed a brighter aspect the sky was clear and the faces of the people he passed were all so merry he even began to laugh at his fears which he now saw were purial he recalled the language of Vilela's letter and perceived at once that it was most friendly and familiar how in the world had he ever been able to read any threat of danger into those words he suddenly realized that they were urgent however and that he had done ill to delay so long it might be some very serious business affair faster, faster he cried to the driver and he began to think of a plausible explanation of his delay he even contemplated taking advantage of this incidence to re-establish his former intimacy in Vilela's household together with his friends he kept echoing in his soul the words of the fortune teller in truth she had guessed the object of his visit his own state of mind and the existence of a third why then wasn't it reasonable to suppose that she had guessed the rest correctly too for the unknown present is the same as the future and thus slowly and persistently the young men's childhood superstitions attained the upper hand and mystery clutched him in its iron claws at times he was ready to burst into laughter and with a certain vexation he did laugh at himself but the woman, the cards her dry reassuring words and her goodbye go, go, ragazzo innamorato and finally that farewell barcarole so lively and gracious such were the new elements which together with the old formed within him a new and abiding faith the truth is that that was happy and impatient recalling the happy hours of the past and anticipating those yet to come as he passed through gloria street camilo gazed across the sea far across where the waters and the heaven meet in endless embrace and the sight gave him a sensation of the future long, long and infinite from here it was but a moments drive to villalas home he stepped out thrust the iron garden gate open and entered the house was silent he ran up the six stone steps and scarcely had he time to knock when the door opened and villala loomed before him pardon my delay it was impossible to come sooner what is the matter villala made no reply his features were distorted he beckoned camilo to step within as he entered camilo could not repress the door there upon the sofa lay rita dead in a pool of blood villala seized the lover by the throat and with two bullets stretched him dead upon the floor end of section 2