When he arrived at the shop, he found the pharmacist alone, with no son to return to him. Cândido’s first instinct was to throttle the man. Fortunately, the pharmacist quickly explained that the child was inside with the family, and when both men went in, Cândido Neves furiously snatched up the baby, much as he had grabbed the runaway slave a little earlier—a very different fury, of course, the fury of love. He brusquely thanked the pharmacist; then, with his son in his arms and the reward in his pocket, he raced off, not to the foundling hospital, but back to their temporary lodgings. When Aunt Mônica heard his explanation, she forgave him for bringing the child back, given that he also brought with him the hundred mil-réis. She did have a few harsh words to say about the slave-woman, though, both for running away and for having miscarried. Kissing his son and shedding genuine tears, Cândido Neves, on the other hand, blessed the fugitive and gave barely a thought to her dead child.

“Not all children make it,” his heart told him.

Maria Cora

MARIA CORA

Chapter I

I ARRIVED HOME one night feeling so tired that I even forgot to wind my watch. My forgetfulness may have had something to do with a certain lady I had met at the comendador’s house, but those two reasons, of course, cancel each other out. Thinking keeps you from sleeping, and sleeping stops you from thinking, so only one of those reasons can be the real one. Let’s just say that neither of them was, and concentrate on the main point: my stopped watch and me waking in the morning to the sound of the house clock chiming ten.

At the time (1893), I was living in a boardinghouse in Catete. There were many such residences in Rio at the time. Mine was small and tranquil. With my four hundred mil-réis I could have afforded a house all to myself, but, firstly, I was already living in the boardinghouse when I won that money at cards, and, secondly, I was a forty-year-old bachelor so accustomed to boardinghouse life that I would have found it impossible to live alone. Marriage was equally impossible. Not that there was any shortage of candidates. Since the end of 1891, more than one lady—and not of the plainer variety, either—had looked at me with tender, friendly eyes. One of the comendador’s daughters was particularly attentive. I didn’t encourage any of them, though; the bachelor life is my very soul, my vocation, my habit, my destiny. I would only love if ordered to or for my own amusement. A couple of adventures a year are quite enough for a heart half inclined toward sunset and night.