“I was twenty-five years old and poor, and had just been made a second lieutenant in the National Guard, the very lowest rank of commissioned officer. You cannot imagine what a huge event this was in our house. My mother was so happy and so proud! She insisted on addressing me as her lieutenant. Cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone was bursting with the purest, sincerest joy. In the town, to be sure, there were several disgruntled fellows—a wailing and gnashing of teeth, as it says in the Scriptures—the reason being that there had been many candidates for the post, and these other fellows were the losers. I suppose some of their annoyance was less understandable, though, and arose simply from a feeling of resentment that someone else should be singled out for distinction. I remember how some young men, even friends of mine, looked at me askance for quite some time afterward. On the other hand, many people were pleased by my appointment, the proof of which is that the whole of my rather splendid uniform was paid for by friends. It was then that one of my aunts, Dona Marcolina, Captain Peçanha’s widow, who lived on a remote and isolated farm many leagues from town, begged me to come and see her, and to bring my uniform. I went, accompanied by a footman, who returned to town a few days later, because no sooner had Auntie Marcolina lured me to her house than she wrote to my mother telling her that she wouldn’t let me go for at least a month. And how she hugged me! She, too, called me her lieutenant. She pronounced me a handsome devil and, being a rather jolly sort herself, even confessed to envying the girl who would one day be my wife. She declared that there was not a man in the entire province who was my equal. And it was always lieutenant this, lieutenant that, every hour of the day or night. I asked her to call me Joãozinho as she used to, but she shook her head, exclaiming that, no, I was ‘Senhor Lieutenant’ and that was that. One of her brothers-in-law, her late husband’s brother, who lived in the house, also refused to address me in any other way. I was ‘Senhor Lieutenant’ not in jest but perfectly seriously, and in front of the slaves as well, who naturally followed suit. I sat at the head of the table and was always served first. It was absurd, really. Such was Auntie Marcolina’s enthusiasm that she went so far as to have a large mirror placed in my room—a magnificent, ornate piece of work, quite out of keeping with the rest of the house, which was furnished simply and modestly. It had been given to her by her godmother, who had inherited it from her mother, who had bought it from one of the Portuguese noblewomen who came to Brazil in 1808 with the rest of King João VI’s court. I don’t know how much truth there was in this story, but that was the family tradition. Naturally, the mirror was very old, but you could still see the gilding, eaten away by time, a couple of carved dolphins in the top corners of the frame, a few bits of mother-of-pearl, and other such artistic flourishes. All rather old, but very good quality.”