Carlota was a truly dazzling sight in her white dress, her garland of orange blossom, her thinnest of thin veils, and wearing no other jewels but her dark eyes, bright as diamonds of the first water.

José Lemos broke off his conversation with Justiniano’s wife and gazed at his daughter. The bride was introduced to the guests and led over to the sofa, where she sat down between her godparents. Balancing his top hat on his knee and steadying it with one expensively gloved hand, Dr. Valença showered his goddaughter with praise, which made the young woman simultaneously blush and smile—an amiable alliance between vanity and modesty.

Steps were heard on the stairs, and José Lemos was preparing himself for the arrival of his future son-in-law, when the Valadares brothers appeared at the door.

Of the two brothers, the oldest, called Calisto, had a sallow complexion, an aquiline nose, brown hair, and round eyes. The younger brother, called Eduardo, only differed from his brother in having a distinctly ruddier complexion. They were both employed by the same company and were in the full bloom of middle age. There was another distinguishing feature: Eduardo wrote poetry when he was allowed time away from the accounts books, while his brother was the enemy of anything that had so much as a whiff of literature about it.

Time passed, and still no sign of either the groom or Lieutenant Porfírio. The groom was essential to the wedding, and the lieutenant to the supper. It was half-past five when Luís Duarte finally arrived. Each guest sang a private “Hallelujah.”

He appeared at the door of the parlor and gave a low bow to the assembled guests, so gracefully and ceremoniously that Dr. Valença felt rather envious.

He was a young man of twenty-five, very fair-skinned, with a blond mustache and no beard at all. He wore his hair parted in the middle. His lips were so red that one of the Valadares brothers whispered to the other: “It looks like he’s wearing lipstick.” In short, Luís Duarte cut a figure guaranteed to please any twenty-year-old girl, and I would have no compunction in calling him an Adonis if he really were one, which he was not. At the appointed hour, bride and groom, parents and godparents set off for the church, which was nearby; the other guests remained in the house, with Luísa and Rodrigo doing the honors, although Rodrigo had to be summoned by his father, and duly appeared dressed in the very latest fashion.

“They’re like a pair of turtledoves,” said Dona Margarida Vilela when the wedding party had left.

“Very true,” agreed the Valadares brothers and Justiniano Vilela.