Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LVIII - The Treaty

It was the case that one Monday, when I returned to the seminary, I saw a lady fall in the street. My first gesture, in such a case, must have been pity or laughter; it was neither, for (and this is what I meant to say in Latin) because you had your socks washed and did not dirty them, you wore garters of silk and did not lose them. Several people came, but they did not have time to raise it; She stood up very much in agony, shook herself, thanked him, and headed down the next street.

"This taste of imitating the French of Ouvidor Street," Jose Dias told me, walking and commenting on the fall, "is evidently a mistake. Our girls must walk as they have always walked, with me I am wandering and patience, and not this tic-tique afranzo ...

I could barely hear him. The lady's socks and garters bleached and curled up before me, and they walked, fell, rose, and left. When we arrived at the corner, I looked at the other street, and I saw, from a distance, our disgust, who went at the same pace, ticked, ticked ...

"You do not seem to have hurt yourself," I said.

"So much the better for her, but it is impossible that she did not scratch her knees; that promptness is morning

I think it was "morning" that he said; I stood on my knees scratched. Dalli in deante, until the seminary, I did not see a woman in the street, who did not want a pain; to some I guessed that he was wearing stockings and tight leashes ... That would not even wear socks ... But I saw them with them ... Or ... It's also possible ...

I am retracting this with reticence, to give an idea of ​​my ideas, which were thus diffused and confused; I certainly do not give a damn. My head was going hot, and the floor was not safe. At the seminar, the first hour was unbearable. The cassocks bore air with skirts, and they reminded me of the lady's. I was no longer one I saw fall; all the ones I had met on the street, were now glinting at the blue leagues; were blue. At night I dreamed of them. A multitude of abominable creatures came to walk around me, ticking ... They were beautiful, some thin, some thick, all of you act like the devil. I nodded, tried to scowl them up with hideousness and other methods, but I slept as quickly as they did, and with their hands clasped around me, they made a wide circle of skirts, or, in the air, they rained feet and legs over mine head. So I went until dawn. I did not sleep anymore; I prayed to our Father, Marguerites, and creeds, and this book being the pure truth, it is a force to confess that I had to interrupt more than once my prayers to follow in the dark a figure in the distance, tick-tick, tick-tick ... She would pick up the prayer quickly, always in the middle, to arrange it well, as if there had been no interruption, but certainly not the old phrase.

Coming evil in the morning, I tried to beat him, but in a way that did not lose him at all. Sages of scripture, guess what could be. That's it. Not being able to reject those pictures from me, I resorted to a treatise between my conscience and my imagination. Feminine visions would henceforth be regarded as mere incarnations of vices, and therefore even contemplable, as the best way of tempering the character and warring it for the harsh battles of life. I did not put it into words, nor was I precise; the contract was made tacitly, with some disgust, but it was done. And for a few days, it was I myself who evoked the visions to strengthen me, and I did not reject them, except when they, in their own way, went away.