“In mourning?” repeated the old man, snapping the book shut; it must be him.

I forgot to say (but there is time for everything) that a brother of Fulgêncio’s had passed away three months earlier, up north, leaving an illegitimate son. Since the brother, a few days before dying, had written to Fulgêncio asking him to take care of the soon-to-be orphan, Fulgêncio sent for the boy to come to Rio de Janeiro. Upon hearing that a young man in mourning had arrived, he concluded that he must be his nephew, and concluded correctly. It was indeed him.

So far, nothing has happened that would seem out of place in any innocently romantic tale: we have an old lunatic, a lonely, sighing damsel, and now the unexpected arrival of a nephew. So as not to descend from the poetic sphere in which we find ourselves, I shall omit to mention that the mule on which Raimundo was mounted was led back by a slave to the place it had been hired from; I shall skim over the arrangements for the young man’s accommodation, limiting myself to saying that since the uncle, by virtue of his devotion to reading, had entirely forgotten that he had sent for the boy, no preparations whatsoever had been made to receive him. However, the house was large and well appointed, and, an hour later, the young man was comfortably lodged in a beautiful room overlooking the kitchen garden, the old well, the laundry, copious lush greenery, and an immense blue sky.

I don’t believe I have yet revealed the new guest’s age. He is fifteen years old, with just a hint of fuzz on his upper lip; in fact, he’s almost a child. So if Caetaninha quickly became flustered, and the slave-women began rushing hither and thither, peering around doors and talking about “the ole master’s nephew come from far away,” it’s because nothing much happened in that house, not because he was a grown man. This was also Fulgêncio’s impression, but here’s the difference. Caetaninha was unaware that the vocation of such fuzz is to become a mustache, or if she thought of it at all, she did this so vaguely that it’s not worth mentioning here. This was not the case with old Fulgêncio. He understood that here was material for a husband, and he resolved to marry the pair of them. But he also saw that, unless he took them by the hand and instructed them to fall in love, chance might move things in a different direction.