Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LXXXIII - The Portrait

Gurgel returned to the room and told Capitú that his daughter was calling for her. I got up quickly and found no composure; He squinted through the chairs. On the contrary, Capitú arose naturally and asked him if the fever had increased.

"No," he said.

Neither startled nor anything, no air of mystery on the part of Capitú; He turned to me, and told me to take my mother and cousin Justina with her, and see you soon; He reached out and ran down the hall. All my jealousy was with her. How could it be that Capitú governed so easily and I did not? "There's a girl," Gurgel said, looking at her.

I murmured that yes. In fact, Capitú was growing in his careers, the forms rounded and invigorated with great intensity; morally, the same thing. She was a woman inside and out, woman on the right and left, woman on all sides, and from the feet to the head. It was more rushed, now that I saw it from day to day; every time she came home she found her taller and fuller; the eyes seemed to have another reflection, and the mouth another empire. Gurgel, turning to the wall of the room where a portrait of a girl hung, asked me if Capitú was similar to the portrait.

One of the customs of my life was always to agree with the probable opinion of my interlocutor, since matter did not aggravate, annoy or impose me. Before examining whether Capitú was indeed similar to the portrait, I replied that I did. Then he said it was the portrait of the woman, and that the people who knew her said the same thing. He also thought that his features were similar, his forehead was mainly his eyes. As for genius, it was one; they looked like sisters. "Finally, even her friendship with Sanchinha; her mother was no longer her friend ... In life there are such exquisite similarities.