Having said this, he took himself off to Itaguaí and devoted himself body and soul to the study of science, alternating healing with reading, and demonstrating theorems with poultices. When he reached the age of forty, he married Dona Evarista da Costa e Mascarenhas, a lady of twenty-five, the widow of a magistrate, who was neither pretty nor charming. One of his uncles, an inveterate meddler in the affairs of others, was frankly surprised by his nephew’s choice, and told him so. Simão Bacamarte explained to him that Dona Evarista combined physiological and anatomical attributes of the first order: good digestion, regular sleep, a steady pulse, and excellent eyesight; she was thus fit to provide him with healthy, sturdy, intelligent offspring. If, in addition to such accomplishments—the only ones with which a sensible man should concern himself—Dona Evarista’s features were somewhat badly formed, then, far from regretting it, he thanked God, since he would thereby not run the risk of ignoring the interests of science in the exclusive, trivial, and vulgar contemplation of his wife.

Dona Evarista failed to live up to her husband’s expectations, providing him with neither sturdy nor sickly offspring. Science is an inherently patient pursuit, and so our doctor waited three years, then four, then five. At the end of this period, he carried out a rigorous study of the matter, reread all the authoritative texts, Arab and otherwise, which he had brought with him to Itaguaí, sent inquiries to the Italian and German universities, and concluded by advising his wife to follow a special diet. The eminent lady, accustomed to eating only succulent Itaguaí pork, did not heed her husband’s advice, and to her understandable but unpardonable resistance we owe the total extinction of the Bacamarte dynasty.

Science, however, has the ineffable gift of curing all ills; our physician immersed himself entirely in the study and practice of medicine. It was at this point that one of its lesser nooks and crannies caught his particular attention: that pertaining to the psychic, to the examination of cerebral pathology, also known at that time as alienism. Nowhere in the colony, or even the kingdom, was there a single expert on this barely explored, indeed almost unexplored, subject. Simão Bacamarte saw an opportunity for Lusitanian, and in particular Brazilian, science to garland itself in “everlasting laurels”—the expression he himself used, but only in a moment of ecstasy within the privacy of his own home; externally, he was modest, as befits a man of learning.

“The health of the mind,” he declaimed, “is the worthiest occupation for a physician.”

“For a true physician,” added Crispim Soares, the town’s apothecary and one of Bacamarte’s close friends and supper companions.