“No, it’s too sunny,” protested the old man.

“We’ll walk in the shade.”

“It’s terribly hot.”

Caetaninha suggested they remain on the veranda, but her godfather said to her mysteriously that Rome was not built in a day, and ended up saying that he would only continue the lesson two days hence. Caetaninha retired to her room and stayed there for three-quarters of an hour, with the door closed, either seated or standing at the window or pacing back and forth, or else looking for something she was already holding in her hand, and even going so far as to imagine herself riding up the road alongside Raimundo. At one point, she saw the young man standing by the garden wall, but, on closer inspection she realized it was a pair of beetles buzzing through the air. One of the beetles was saying to the other:

“Thou art the flower of our race, the flower of the air, the flower of flowers, the sun and moon of my life.”

To which the other replied:

“No one exceeds thee in beauty and grace; thy buzzing is an echo of divine voices; but leave me . . . leave me . . .”

“Why should I leave thee, O soul of these sylvan glades?”

“I have told thee, king of pure breezes, leave me.”

“Do not speak to me like that, thou charm and ornament of the forest. Everything above and around us is saying that thou shouldst speak to me another way. Dost thou not know the song of blue mysteries?”

“Let us listen to it upon the green leaves of the orange tree.”

“The leaves of the mango tree are lovelier.”

“Thou art more beautiful than both.”

“And thee, O sun of my life?”

“Moon of my being, I am whatever thou wilt have me be . . .”

This is how the two beetles were talking. She listened to them, engrossed. When they disappeared, she turned away from the window, saw what time it was, and left her bedroom. Raimundo had gone out; she went to wait for him at the front gate for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty minutes. When he returned, they said very little; they met and parted two or three times. The last time it was she who took him to the veranda, to show him a trinket she thought she’d lost and had just found. Readers, please do her the justice of believing that this was a blatant lie. Meanwhile, Fulgêncio brought the next lesson forward and gave it on the following day between lunch and dinner. Never had he spoken so clearly and simply, which was just as it should be, for it was the lesson concerning the existence of man, a profoundly metaphysical chapter, in which it was necessary to consider everything and from every possible angle.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“Perfectly.”