This Councilman, a highly articulate fellow named Sebastião Freitas, spoke at some length. He presented the case against the Green House with restraint but with firm conviction. His colleagues were dumbfounded. The President begged him at least to help preserve law and order by not expressing his opinions in the street, where they might give body and soul to what was so far merely a whirlwind of uncoordinated atoms. This figure of speech counterbalanced to some extent the one about the Bastille. Sebastião Freitas promised to take no action for the present but reserved the right to seek the elimination of the Green House by legal means. And he murmured to himself lovingly: “That Bastille of the human reason!”

Nevertheless, the crowd grew. Not thirty but three hundred now followed the barber, whose nickname ought to be mentioned at this point because it gave the rebellion its name: he was called Stewed Corn, and the movement was therefore known as the Revolt of the Stewed Corners. Storming through the streets toward the Green House, they might well have been compared to the mob that stormed the Bastille, with due allowance, of course, for the difference between Paris and Itaguai.

A young child attached to the household ran in from the street and told Dona Evarista the news. The alienist’s wife was trying on a silk dress (one of the thirty-seven she had bought in Rio).

“It’s probably just a bunch of drunks,” she said as she changed the location of a pin. “Benedita, is the hem all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the slave, who was squatting on the floor, “it looks fine. Just turn a little bit. Like that. It’s perfect, ma’am.”

“They’re not a bunch of drunks, Dona Evarista,” said the child in fear. “They’re shouting: ‘Death to Dr. Bacamarte the tyrant.’”

“Be quiet! Benedita, look over here on the left side. Don’t you think the seam is a little crooked? We’ll have to rip it and sew it again. Try to make it nice and even this time.”

“Death to Dr. Bacamarte! Death to the tyrant!” howled three hundred voices in the street.

The blood left Dona Evarista’s face. She stood there like a statue, petrified with terror. The slave ran instinctively to the back door. The child, whom Dona Evarista had refused to believe, enjoyed a moment of unexpressed but profound satisfaction.

“Death to the alienist!” shouted the voices, now closer than before.