They had been discussing this for some time, but, despite Maria Cora having sworn to the contrary, a reconciliation was still not impossible, again thanks to her aunt’s intervention. She had suggested to her niece that she go and live for a few months in Rio or São Paulo. Then something very sad occurred. In a moment of madness, João da Fonseca threatened Maria Cora with a whip. According to another version, he tried to strangle her. I prefer to believe the first version, and that the second was invented to cast a coarse, depressing light on João da Fonseca’s violence. Maria Cora did not speak to her husband again. The separation was immediate, and she traveled to Rio de Janeiro with her aunt, having first, quite amicably, sorted out the couple’s financial affairs. Besides, the aunt herself was very rich.

João da Fonseca and Prazeres went on to live a life full of adventures, which I will not go into here. Only one event impinges directly on my story. Some time after the separation, João da Fonseca had enlisted with the rebels. However strong his political passions, they would not have been enough to make him take up arms had Prazeres not issued a kind of challenge; that, at least, is what his friends say, although the matter remains obscure. According to their version, Prazeres, exasperated with their troops’ repeated losses, told Fonseca that she was going to disguise herself as a man, don a soldier’s uniform, and go and fight for the revolution, and she would have been perfectly capable of doing this too. Fonseca told her this was utter madness, and then she proposed that he should go in her stead; that would be a real proof of his love for her.

“Haven’t I given you enough proof?”

“Yes, but that would be a far greater proof than all the rest, and would keep me bound to you until death.”

“Are you not already bound to me until death?” he asked, laughing.

“No.”

That may be what happened. Prazeres was, indeed, an impulsive, imperious woman and knew how to bind a man to her with bonds of steel. The Federalist, whom she abandoned for João da Fonseca, did everything he could to get her back, then moved east, where, it’s said, he lives a wretched life, that his hair has turned gray and he has aged twenty years, and wants nothing more to do with women or politics. In the end, João da Fonseca gave in; she even begged him to let her go, too, and, if necessary, to fight alongside him; but he refused. The revolution would soon triumph, he said; once the government forces had been vanquished, he would return to the estate in Rio Grande, where she would wait for him.

“No,” she said, “I’ll wait for you in Porto Alegre.”

Chapter IV