Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LX - Dear Opusculo

So I did to the Panegyrico of Santa Monica, and did more: he told her not only what was missing from the saint, but still things that were not of her. You see the sonnet, the socks, the garters, the seminarist Escobar and several others. Go now to see the more that day I left the yellow pages of the opusculo. Dear opusculo, you were not good for anything, but what more do you lend an old pair of slippers? However, there is a lot in the couple of chinellas one like aroma and heat of two feet. Spent and broken, they can not fail to remember that a person wore them in the morning, when he got up from the bed, or barefoot them at night when he entered her. And if the comparison is not valid, because the chinellas are still a part of the person and had the contact of the feet, here are other souvenirs, such as the stone of the street, the door of the house, a private whistle, a prégão de quitanda, like that one of the cocadas that I counted in cap. XVIII. Precisely, when I counted the cup of cocadas, I was so badly missed that he reminded me to make him write for a friend, a master of music, and grudge him to the legs of the chapter. If I then jiggled the chapter, it was because another musician, to whom I showed him, he confessed to me naively not to find in the written passage anything that he would miss. Lest the same happens to other professionals who may read me, it is better to spare the publisher of the book the work and the removal of the engraving. You see that you do not put anything, nor do I put it on. Now, I believe, it is not enough that the street markets, like the seminary opuscuits, should bring cases, people, and sensations to a close; it is necessary that we have known them and suffered in time, without which everything is silent and colorless.

But, let's go to the more that I left the yellow pages.