Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

CXXX - One Day

Because one day Capitú wanted to know what made me go quiet and bored. And Europe, Mines, Petropolis, a series of dances, a thousand of these remedies advised to the melancholy. I did not know that I would answer; I refused the amusements. As I insisted, I told him that my business was bad. Capitú smiled to cheer me up. And what had to go wrong? They would walk again, and until then the jewels, the objects of some value would be sold, and we would reside in some becco. We would live soggy and forgotten; then we would return to the surface of the water. The tenderness with which he told me this was to move the stones. Well, not like that. I answered curtly that it was not necessary to sell anything. I let myself be silent and bored. Ella proposed me to play cards or checkers, a walking tour, a visit to Matacavallos; and as I did not see anything, he went into the living room, opened the piano, and began to play; I took advantage of the absence, took the hat and left.

... Excuse me, but this chapter was to be preceded by another, in which I told an incident a few weeks earlier, two months after Sancha's departure. I'll write it down; he could put it before him, before sending the book to the prelate, but it is very difficult to change the number of pages; goes anyway, then the narration will continue right to the end. Moreover, it is short.