“Throwing you a lifeline. I’m really being very reasonable. Come on, say yes. Write me a note for the deposit now and we’ll tear up the bill of exchange.”

Vasconcelos tried to object, but it was impossible to convince Senhor José Brito.

He signed a note for eighteen contos.

When his creditor left, Vasconcelos began thinking seriously about his life.

Up until then, he had spent so wildly and so blindly that he hadn’t noticed the abyss he himself had dug beneath his feet.

It had taken the voice of one of his executioners to alert him to this.

Vasconcelos pondered, calculated, and went through all his expenses and his obligations, and saw that he had less than a quarter of his fortune left—a mere pittance if he were to continue living as he had until now.

What to do?

Vasconcelos picked up his hat and went out.

It was growing dark.

After walking for some time, deep in thought, he went into the Alcazar.

It was a way of distracting himself.

There he found the usual people.

Batista came to greet his friend.

“Why the glum face?” he asked.

And for want of a better answer, Vasconcelos replied: “Oh, it’s nothing. Someone just stepped on a corn.”

However, a chiropodist standing nearby heard this remark and thereafter did not take his eyes off poor Vasconcelos, who was in a particularly sensitive mood that night. In the end, he found the chiropodist’s insistent gaze so troubling that he left.

He went to the Hotel de Milão to have supper. However preoccupied he might be, his stomach was still making its usual demands.

In the middle of eating, he suddenly remembered the one thing he should never have forgotten: Gomes’s proposal of marriage to his daughter.

It was like a ray of sunshine.

“Gomes is rich,” thought Vasconcelos. “That’s the best way out of all these problems. Gomes can marry Adelaide, and, since he’s my friend, he couldn’t possibly deny me what I need. For my part, I will try to get back what I’ve lost. What a stroke of luck!”

Vasconcelos continued his meal in the best of moods, then returned to the Alcazar, where a few other lads and some members of the female sex helped him to forget his troubles completely.

He returned peacefully home at his regular time of three o’clock in the morning.

IV

The following day, Vasconcelos’s first priority was to sound out Adelaide. He wanted to do so, though, when Augusta was not there. Fortunately, she needed to go to Rua da Quitanda to view some new fabrics, and she set off with her brother-in-law, leaving Vasconcelos entirely free.

As readers will already know, Adelaide loved her father deeply, and would do anything for him. She was, moreover, the soul of kindness. Vasconcelos was counting on those two qualities.