I was dumbstruck. Everyone praised my dedication and patience. The initial formalities of drawing up the estate detained me in the town for some time. I appointed a lawyer and everything proceeded smoothly. During this time, there was much talk of the colonel. People came to tell me things about him, in rather less moderate terms than the priest; I defended the colonel, pointing out his few virtues, yes, he could be stern perhaps . . .

“Stern, you say? Well, he’s dead now and good riddance, but he was the very devil, that’s for sure.”

And they described incidents of extraordinary, even perverse, cruelty. What could I say? At first I listened with curiosity; then I began to feel a singular pleasure, which I made a genuine effort to drive out. I continued to defend the colonel, explain his actions, and attribute certain things to local rivalries. He was, I confessed, somewhat violent . . .

“Somewhat? He was a vicious snake-in-the-grass!” said the barber. The tax collector, the pharmacist, the notary, and everyone else agreed. Other stories followed, encompassing the entire life of the dead man. Older people recalled his cruelties as a little boy. And that secret, silent, insidious pleasure grew inside me like a kind of moral tapeworm, which for all that I tried to extract it, ring by ring, would always recover and keep on growing.

The legal formalities kept me busy, and, besides, since no one in the town had a good word to say about the colonel, I began to find the place less forbidding than I had at first. Once I took possession of my inheritance, I converted it into bonds and cash. Many months passed, and the idea of distributing it all in charitable gifts and worthy donations no longer held me in such a firm grip; I even began to consider this rather presumptuous. I trimmed back the initial plan; I gave something to the poor, new vestments to the parish church, and a donation to the Santa Casa Hospital: thirty-two contos in all. I also had a tomb built for the colonel, all marble, the work of a Neapolitan sculptor who was here in Rio until 1866, before going off to die, I believe, in Paraguay.

The years have rolled by and my memories have grown faded and gray. I still sometimes think about the colonel, but without the terror of those early days. I told several doctors about the colonel’s illnesses and they all agreed that death would have been imminent; they were only surprised he hadn’t succumbed earlier. I may have unwittingly exaggerated his ailments, but the truth is he was going to die, no matter what happened . . .

Anyway, farewell, dear friend. If you judge these scribblings of any value, then repay me with my own marble tomb, on which you may carve as an epitaph this little amendment I have made to the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they that possess: for they shall be comforted.”

Mr. Diplomat