ELIAS XAVIER—This Elias is a subordinate fellow, destined to serve someone, and serve him smugly, like a coachman to a fashionable household. He vulgarly treats my personal visits with a certain arrogance and disdain: the policy of an ambitious lackey. From the first weeks I knew him, I realized that he wanted to make himself my intimate friend, and I also understood that on the day he really became one, he would throw all the others out in the street. There are times when he calls me to one side to talk to me secretly about the weather. His aim is clearly to instill in the others a suspicion that there are private matters between us, and he achieves precisely this, because all the others bow and scrape before him. He is intelligent, good-humored, and refined. He’s an excellent conversationalist. I don’t know anyone with a sharper intellect. He is neither cowardly nor slanderous. He only speaks ill of someone when his own interests are at stake; when such interests are absent, he holds his tongue, whereas true slander is gratuitous. He is dedicated and persuasive. He has no ideas, it’s true, but that’s the difference between him and Diogo Vilares: Diogo simply parrots the ideas he hears, whereas Elias knows how to make them his own and choose the opportune moment to introduce them into the conversation. An event in 1865 provides a good illustration of the man’s shrewdness. He was due to be granted a knighthood by the government for providing some freed slaves for the war in Paraguay. He had no need of me, but he came to see me on two or three occasions, with a dismayed and pleading air, to ask me to intercede on his behalf. I spoke to the minister, who told me: “Elias knows the document has already been drafted and only awaits the Emperor’s signature.” I understood then that this was simply a way of showing how deeply indebted he was to me. A good partner at whist; a touch quarrelsome, but he knows what he’s doing.

“Well, really, Uncle Joaquim!” exclaimed Benjamin, getting to his feet. A few moments later, he thought to himself: “Here I am reading the unpublished book of his heart. I only knew the public edition, revised and expurgated. This is the original, internal text, exact and authentic. But who would have thought it of Uncle Joaquim!”