“So? We’ve made a lot of money,” said her husband. “Why, only yesterday the accountant showed me the figures. Would you like to see?”

And he showed her the ledgers. Dona Evarista was dazzled by that Milky Way of numbers. Then he showed her the coffers where the money was kept.

Goodness! There were heaps of gold; piles and piles of doubloons and mil-cruzado coins, a veritable treasure trove.

The alienist watched while she devoured the gold coins with her dark eyes, and whispered in her ear this most perfidious of remarks:

“Who would have imagined that half a dozen lunatics . . .”

Dona Evarista understood his meaning, smiled, and gave a heavy sigh:

“God must know what He is doing!”

Three months later, they set off: Dona Evarista, her aunt, the apothecary’s wife, and one of their nephews, together with a priest whom the alienist had met in Lisbon and who happened to be in Itaguaí, five or six footmen, and four slave-women; this was the entourage that the townsfolk watched depart on that May morning. The farewells were a sad affair for everyone concerned, apart, that is, from the alienist. Although Dona Evarista’s tears were abundant and sincere, they were not enough to move him. As a man of science, and only of science, nothing beyond science could dismay him, and the only thing bothering him on that occasion, as he cast an uneasy, policeman’s gaze over the crowd, was the thought that some madman might be lurking among those of sound mind.

“Goodbye!” sobbed the ladies and the apothecary.

And so the entourage left. As the apothecary and the doctor returned home, Crispim Soares kept his gaze fixed firmly between the ears of his mule, while Simão Bacamarte’s eyes were fixed on the horizon ahead, leaving his horse to deal with how to get home. What a striking image of the genius and the common man! One stares at the present, filled with tears and regrets, while the other scrutinizes the future with its promise of new dawns.

Chapter 4

A NEW THEORY

As Dona Evarista’s journey brought her, tearfully, closer to Rio de Janeiro, Simão Bacamarte was studying, from every angle, a bold new idea that stood to enlarge substantially the foundations of psychology. He spent any time away from his duties at the Casa Verde roaming the streets, or going from house to house, talking to people about anything and everything, and punctuating his words with a stare that put fear into even the most heroic of souls.

One morning, about three weeks later, while Crispim Soares was busy concocting some medicine or other, someone came to tell him that the alienist wanted to see him.

“He says it’s important,” added the messenger.