Sitting stiffly on his chair, Rangel was speechless. Where had this hurricane blown in from? And the hurricane continued to blow, lifting the men’s hats and tousling the ladies’ hair, and all of them laughing merrily: Queirós here, Queirós there, Queirós everywhere. Rangel went from stupefaction to mortification. Slowly, the scepter was falling from his grasp. He didn’t look at the other man, didn’t laugh at anything he said, and answered him only curtly. Inside, he was seething with rage and cursing the man, one of those happy fools who knows how to amuse people and make them laugh, because that’s what happens at parties. But not even telling himself these and even worse things restored his peace of mind. In the innermost depths of his self-esteem, he was really suffering. Worse still, the other man saw this, and, worst of all, knew he was the cause of it.

Just as he dreamt of future glories, Rangel also dreamt of revenge. In his head, he pounded Queirós to a pulp. Then he imagined some sort of disaster befalling his rival; a sudden pain would do, something serious enough to get rid of the interloper entirely. But no pain appeared, nothing at all; the wretch seemed to grow merrier by the minute, and the whole room fell under his spell. Even Joaninha, normally so timid, quivered with excitement in Queirós’s hands, as did the other young ladies; all the guests, men and women, seemed to be at his beck and call. When he mentioned dancing, all the young ladies rushed over to Uncle Rufino and asked him to play a quadrille on his flute, just one, promising not to ask for any more.

“I can’t, I’ve got a callus on my finger.”

“The flute?” exclaimed Calisto. “Ask Queirós to play something and then you’ll see what a flute can really do. Go and get your flute, Rufino. Come on, everyone, listen to Queirós. You can’t imagine how hauntingly he plays!”

Queirós played “Casta Diva.” “Utterly ridiculous,” Rangel muttered to himself, “even the kids in the street are whistling that tune.” He shot Queirós a sideways glance, trying to determine whether any serious man would ever stand with his arms like that, and concluded that the flute was indeed a grotesque instrument. He also looked at Joaninha and saw that, like everyone else, her eyes were on Queirós, enraptured, carried away by the sounds of the aria. He shuddered, although without quite knowing why. Joaninha’s expression was no different from everyone else’s, and yet he felt something which added a further complication to his dislike of the interloper. When Queirós finished playing, Joaninha clapped less loudly than the others, and Rangel was unsure whether to attribute this to her usual shyness or to some other emotion. He urgently needed to give her that letter.