“And apropos the Green House,” said Father Lopes, gliding skillfully into the subject, “you will find it full of patients.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Mateus is there. . . .”

“The saddler?”

“Costa is there too. So is Costa’s cousin, and So-and-so, and What’s-his-name, and . . . ”

“All insane?”

“Apparently,” replied the priest.

“But how? Why?”

Father Lopes drew down the corners of his mouth as if to say that he did not know or did not wish to tell what he knew—a vague reply, which could not be repeated to anyone. Dona Evarista found it strange indeed that all those people should have gone mad. It might easily happen to one or another—but to all of them? Yet she could hardly doubt the fact. Her husband was a learned man, a scientist; he would not commit anyone to the Green House without clear proof of insanity.

The priest punctuated her observations with an intermittent “undoubtedly . . . undoubtedly . . . ”

A few hours later about fifty guests were seated at Simão Bacamarte’s table for the home-coming dinner. Dona Evarista was the obligatory subject of toasts, speeches, and verses, all of them highly metaphorical. She was the wife of the new Hippocrates, the muse of science, an angel, the dawn, charity, consolation, life itself. Her eyes were two stars, according to Crispim Soares, and two suns, by a Councilman’s less modest figure. The alienist found all this a bit tiresome but showed no signs of impatience. He merely leaned toward his wife and told her that such flights of fancy, although permissible in rhetoric, were unsubstantiated in fact. Dona Evarista tried to accept this opinion; but, even if she discounted three fourths of the flattery, there was enough left to inflate her considerably. One of the orators, for example—Martim Brito, twenty-five, a pretentious fop, much addicted to women—declaimed that the birth of Dona Evarista had come about in this manner: “After God gave the universe to man and to woman, who are the diamond and the pearl of the divine crown” (and the orator dragged this phrase triumphantly from one end of the table to the other), “God decided to outdo God and so he created Dona Evarista.”

The alienist’s wife lowered her eyes with exemplary modesty. Two other ladies, who thought Martim Brito’s expression of adulation excessive and audacious, turned to observe its effect on Dona Evarista’s husband. They found his face clouded with misgivings, threats, and possibly blood. The provocation was great indeed, thought the two ladies. They prayed God to prevent any tragic occurrence—or, better yet, to postpone it until the next day. The more charitable of the two admitted (to herself) that Dona Evarista was above suspicion, for she was so very unattractive. And yet not all tastes were alike. Maybe some men . . . This idea caused her to tremble again, although less violently than before; less violently, for the alienist was now smiling at Martim Brito.