“Right, then!” said Vaz Nunes, putting on his hat.

It was the fateful moment. Not a word from the notary, not even an invitation to dine with him; nothing. It was the end of the road. But supreme moments call for supreme efforts. Custódio felt this cliché in all its strength, and, suddenly, like a shot, he asked the notary if he couldn’t at least give him ten mil-réis.

“Shall I show you?”

And the notary unbuttoned his jacket, took out his wallet, opened it, and removed two notes of five mil-réis.

“See? That’s all I have,” he said. “What I can do is share them with you; I’ll give you one five mil-réis note, and I’ll keep the other; will that do?”

Custódio accepted the five mil-réis, not glumly or with bad grace, but smiling, indeed as thrilled as if he had just conquered Asia Minor. There was his dinner taken care of. He shook the other man’s hand, thanked him for his kindness, bade him farewell for now—a “for now” full of implicit meanings. Then he left; the beggar slipping out the door of the notary’s office and the general marching boldly down the street, nodding fraternally to the English merchants making their way up toward the suburbs. Never had the sky seemed so blue or the evening so clear; all the men around him had a gleam of hospitality in their eyes. With his left hand he lovingly squeezed the five-mil-réis note in his trouser pocket, the residue of a grand ambition which, but a short time ago, had soared boldly up to the sun like an eagle, and now flapped modestly with the flightless wings of a chicken.

The Most Serene Republic

THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC

(Canon Vargas’s Lecture)

GENTLEMEN,

Before informing you of a new discovery, which I consider will bring some luster to our nation, please allow me to thank you for your prompt response to my invitation. I know that only the loftiest of interests have brought you here today, but I am also aware—and it would be ungrateful on my part not to be—that your entirely legitimate sense of scientific curiosity is mingled with a modicum of affection. I very much hope that I may prove worthy of both.

My discovery is not a recent one; it dates from the latter part of 1876. I did not reveal it then for a reason you will easily comprehend, and if it weren’t for Globo, surely our capital’s most interesting newspaper, I would not be revealing it now. The work I have come here to discuss with you still lacks a few final touches, verifications, and complementary experiments. However, when Globo reported that an English expert has discovered the phonetic language of insects, citing a study undertaken with flies, I immediately wrote to colleagues in Europe, and keenly await their responses. Since it is undoubtedly the case that, in the field of aerial navigation, so ably invented by our very own Father Bartolomeu, the names of foreigners have taken all the glory, while that of our compatriot is scarcely remembered even by his own people, I was determined to avoid the fate of that eminent Flying Priest, and so have come to this rostrum to proclaim loud and clear, to the entire universe, that long before that English expert, and far beyond the British Isles, I, a humble naturalist, discovered exactly the same thing, and made a much better job of it.