She repeated the same thing in the letters she wrote her husband, both before and after receiving his reply to her first letter. In that reply the eminent judge gave his consent, adding that it pained him greatly that, due to a slight indisposition, he would be unable to attend the nuptials; however, he gave them his paternal blessing, and asked for a portrait of his new son-in-law.

His wishes were followed to the letter. The wedding took place twenty-four hours after his letter arrived from Pará. It was, as Dona Benedita told certain friends later on, an admirable, splendid affair. Canon Roxo officiated, and it goes without saying that Dona Maria dos Anjos was not present, still less her son. Up until the very last minute, she had expected to receive a wedding announcement, an invitation, or perhaps a visit, even if she would, naturally enough, refrain from actually attending the ceremony; but nothing came. She was frankly astonished, and scoured her memory again and again for some inadvertent slight on her part that could explain this new coolness. Finding nothing, she imagined some intrigue. But she imagined wrongly, for it was a simple oversight. On the day of the wedding, it suddenly occurred to Dona Benedita that she had forgotten to send Dona Maria dos Anjos a wedding announcement.

“Eulália, it seems we didn’t send the announcement to Dona Maria dos Anjos,” she said to her daughter over breakfast.

“I don’t know, Mama. It was you who organized the invitations.”

“Well, it seems that I didn’t,” said Dona Benedita. “More sugar, João.”

The footman handed her the sugar, and, stirring her tea, she remembered the carriage that would be going to fetch the canon, and repeated one of the orders she had given the day before.

But fortune is a capricious thing. Two weeks after the wedding, they received news of the judge’s death. I will not describe Dona Benedita’s grief; it was deep and sincere. The young newlyweds, lost in their own world up in Tijuca, came down to see her; Dona Benedita wept the tears of a heartbroken and devotedly faithful wife. After the seventh-day mass, she consulted her daughter and son-in-law on the idea of her going to Pará and having a tomb built for her husband, where she could kiss the earth in which he now lay. Mascarenhas exchanged a look with his wife, and then said to his mother-in-law that it would be better for them to go together, since he was due to go to the North in three months’ time on a government commission. Dona Benedita resisted somewhat, but accepted the three-month delay, meanwhile setting about giving all the necessary instructions for the building of the tomb. And so the tomb was built, but Mascarenhas’s commission did not materialize, and Dona Benedita was unable to go.