The journey did not take place, for superstitious reasons. On the Sunday night, Dona Benedita realized that the steamer would be leaving on a Friday, which seemed to her a bad day to travel. They would go instead on the next steamer. However, they did not go on the next one, but this time her reasons lay entirely beyond the reach of human understanding; in such cases, the best advice is not to attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible. The fact of the matter is that Dona Benedita did not go, saying that she would go on the third steamer, unless, of course, something happened to change her plans.

Her daughter had come up with a party and a new friendship. The new friendship was with a family in Andaraí; no one knows what the party was for, but it must have been a splendid affair, because Dona Benedita was still talking about it three days later. Three days! It really was too much. As for the family, they could not have been kinder; the whole thing had made the most tremendous impression on Dona Benedita. I use this superlative because she herself used it: a document made by human hands.

“Those people made the most tremendous impression on me.”

And she began going for strolls in Andaraí, enchanted by the company of Dona Petronilha, Counselor Beltrão’s wife, and her sister Dona Maricota, who was going to marry a naval officer, the brother of that other naval officer whose mustache, eyes, hair, and bearing match those of the portrait the reader glimpsed earlier in that drawer. The married sister was thirty-two, and her earnestness and charming manners entirely bewitched Dona Benedita. The unmarried sister was a flower, a wax flower, another expression of Dona Benedita’s, which I have left unaltered for fear of watering down the truth.

One of the most obscure aspects of this whole curious story is the speed with which friendships blossomed and events unfurled. For example, another regular visitor to Andaraí, along with Dona Benedita, was the very naval officer pictured on that little card. He was First Lieutenant Mascarenhas, whom Counselor Beltrão predicted would become an admiral. Note, however, the officer’s perfidy: he came in uniform; and Dona Benedita, who adored any new spectacle, found him so distinguished, so handsome compared with the other men in civilian clothes, that she preferred him to all of them, and told him so. The officer thanked her earnestly. She told him he must come and see them; he begged permission to pay a visit.

“A visit? Why, you must come and dine with us.”

Mascarenhas assented with a bow.

“Look here,” said Dona Benedita, “why don’t you come tomorrow?”