Brazilian Tales-Various

0:00Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. Preface of Brazilian Tales This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org Recording by Lini Brazilian Tales by Various Authors translated by Isaac Goldberg Some informal preliminary remarks The noted Brazilian critic, José Veríssimo, in a short but important essay on the deficiencies of his country's letters has expressed serious doubt as to whether there exists a genuinely Brazilian literature. I do not know, he writes, whether the existence of an entirely independent literature is possible

1:05without an entirely independent language. In this sense, Veríssimo would deny the existence of a Swiss or Belgian literature. In this sense too, it was no doubt once possible with no small measure of justification to deny the existence of an American as distinguished from an English literature. Yet, despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment, which helps to shape pronunciation as well as vocabulary in the language itself, is, from the standpoint of literature, little removed from the language as a determining factor. Looking at the question however, from the purely linguistic standpoint, it is important to remember that the Spanish of Spanish America is more different from the parent tongue than is the English of this country from that of the mother nation. Similar changes have taken place in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil.

2:05Yet, who would now pretend, on the basis of linguistic similarity, to say that there is no United States literature as distinguished from English literature? After all, is it not national life as much as national language that makes literature? And by an inversion of Veríssimo's standard, may we not come face to face with a state of affairs in which different literatures exist within the same tongue? Indeed, is not such a conception as the great American novel rendered quite futile in the United States by the fact that, from the literary standpoint, we are several countries, rather than one? The question is largely academic. At the same time, it is interesting to notice the more assertive standpoint, lately adopted by the charming Mexican poet Luis Urbina, in his recent Lavida Lítera de México, where, without undue national pride, he claims the right to use the adjective Mexican

3:06in qualifying the letters of his remarkable country. Urbina shows that different physiological and psychological types have been produced in his part of the New World. Why then should the changes stop there? Nor have they seized at that point, as Saint-Gourubina's delightful and informative book reveals. So too, whatever the merits of the academic question involved, a book like Alenca's Guadani, for instance, could not have been written outside of Brazil. Neither could Videsimus own scenes from Amazon Life. Brazilian literature has been divided into four main periods. The first extends from the age of discovery and exploration to the middle of the 18th century. The second includes the second half of the 18th century. The third comprises the years of the 19th century up to 1840, while that date inaugurates the triumph of Romanticism over pseudo-classicism. Romanticism, as in other countries, gave way in turn to realism and various other movements current in those turbulent decades.

4:14Sometimes, the changes came not as a natural phase of literary evolution, but rather as the consequence of pure imitation. Thus, Videsimus tells us, symbolism in Brazil was a matter of intentional peritain, in many cases unintelligent. It did not correspond to a movement of reaction, mystical, sensualist, individualist, socialistic, or anarchistic, as in Europe. Two chief impulses were early present in Brazilian letters, that of Portuguese literature and that of the Jesuit colleges. At the time of the discovery of Brazil, only Italy, Spain, France and Portugal possessed a literary life. Portugal, indeed, as the Brazilian critic points out, was then in its golden period. It boasted chroniclers like Fernel López, novelists like Bernadinho Béidou, historians like João Jibáros, and Dremitists of the stamp of Júvis Sancti.

5:14The Jesuit colleges, too, were followed by other orders, spreading Latin culture, and maintaining communication between the interior and the important centers. It is natural, then, that early letters in Brazil should have been Portuguese, not only in language, but in inspiration, feeling, and spirit. Similarly, we find the early intellectual dependence of the Spanish-American countries upon Spain, even as later both the Spanish and the Portuguese writers of America were to be influenced greatly by French literature. Brazilian poetry, says Videsimus in the little essay already referred to, was already in the 17th century superior to Portuguese verse. He foresaw a time when it would outdistance the modern country. But Brazilian literature, as a whole, he found, lacked the perfect continuity, the cohesion, the unity of great literatures, chiefly because it began as Portuguese, later turned to East, particularly France, and only then to Brazil itself.

6:19In the early days, it naturally lacked the solidarity that comes from easy communication between literary centers. The same lack of communication was in a sense still true at the time he wrote his essay. The element of communicability that exists during the Romantic period, 1835-1860, from France, England, Italy, and even Germany, and letters were rapidly denationalized. What was thus needed and beneficial from the standpoint of national culture, prejudiced the interests of national literature, says Videsimus. He finds, too, that there is too little originality in culture among Brazilian writers, and that there were lacks sincerity and form, 1899. Poetry was too often reduced to the love of form, while fiction was too closely copied from the French, thus operating to stifle the development of a national dramatic literature. Excessive preoccupation with politics and finance, where have we heard that complain elsewhere,

7:22still further impeded the arise of a truly native literature. Perhaps Videsimus' outlook was too pessimistic. He was an earnest spirit, unafraid to speak his mind, and too much a lover of truth to be misled by a love of his country, into making exaggerated claims for words by his countrymen. We must not forget that he was here looking upon Brazilian letters as a whole. In other essays by him, we discover that same sober spirit, but he is alive to the virtues of his fellow writers, as well as to their failings. It is with the prose of the latest period in Brazilian literature that we are here concerned. From the point of view of the novel and tale, Brazil shares with Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico, the leadership of the Latin American republics. If Colombia, in Jorge Sács Maria, can show the novel best known to the rest of the world, and Chile, in such a figure as Alberto Blesgana, author of Martin Drivas and other novels,

8:24as South American Balsac. Brazil may point to more than one work of fiction that is worthy of standing beside Maria, Martin Drivas, or José Marmal's exciting tale of love and adventure, Amalia. The growing importance of Brazil is a commercial nation, together with a corresponding increase of interest in the study of Portuguese, a language easily acquired by all who know Spanish, who have the desirable effect of making known to the English reading public a selection of works deserving of greater recognition. Just to mention at random a few of the books that should in the near future be known to American readers, either in the original or through the medium of translations, I shall recall some of the names best known to Brazilians in connection with the modern tale and novel. If there be anything lacking in the array of modern writers, it is a certain broad variety of subject and treatment to which other literatures have accustomed us. It is not to be wonder that that in surroundings such as the Amazon affords an Indian school of literature should have arisen.

9:27We have an analogous type of fiction in the United States literature, old and new, produced by similar causes. Brazilian Indianism reached its highest point perhaps in José Jelencar's famous Guarani, which won for its author national reputation and achieved unprecedented success. From the book was made a libreto that was such a music by the Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes. The story is replete with an intensity of life and charming descriptions that recall the pages of Chateau Ria, and it scrolls often verges upon poetry and its idealization of the Indian race. Of the author's other numerous works, irassama alone approaches Guarani in popularity. The dominant note of the author, after word much repeated in the literary history of his nation, is the essential goodness and self-abnegation of the national character. Alfred Descainiol Toné, 1843-1899, is among the most important of Brazil's novelists.

10:42Born at Rio de Janeiro of Noble Family, he went through a course in letters and science, later engaging in the campaign of Paraguay. He took part in the retreat of La Laguna, an event which he has enshrined in one of his best works, first published in French under the title La Headthite de La Laguna. He served also as a secretary to Kant de, who commanded the Brazilian army, and later occupied various political offices, rising to the office of Senator in 1886. His list of works is too numerous to mention in a fragmentary introduction of this nature, chief among them stands in Ossencia, a sister tale so to speak to Isaac's Maria. According to Veríssimo, Inocencia is one of the country's few genuinely original novels. It has been called by Meiju, the best novel written South America by a South American, a complement later paid by Gugiamo Ferreiro to Graças Rengas Canã.

11:43This Kantoné's famous work has been translated into French twice, once into English, Italian, German, Danish and even Japanese. The scene is laid in the deserted Matugrosu, a favorite background of the authors. Inocencia is all that her name implies, and dwells secluded with her father, who is a minor, her niggress slave Konga, and her caliban-like dwarf Tico, who loves Inocencia, the Miranda of this district. Inocencia's life comes the itinerant physician Serino Di Campus, who is called by her father to cure her of the fever. Serino is her ferdinand, they make love and secret, for she is meant by paternal arrangements for a mere brute of a meal driver, Manassau by name. Inocencia vows herself to Serino, when the meal driver comes to enforce his prior claim, the father, bound by his word of honor, sides with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems for ordained, for Inocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manassau avenges himself by killing the doctor.

12:48A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor in a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic atmosphere. Comparing Inocencia with what has been termed its sister work, Maria, I believe that Maria is the better tale of the two, although there is much to be said for both. The point need not be pressed. The herring of Maria is more a woman, less a child than Inocencia, hence the fate of the Spanish girl is tragic, where that of the other maiden is merely pitiful. Inocencia, on the other hand, is stout her in texture. In Maria there is no love struggle, the struggle is with life in circumstance. In Inocencia there is not only the element of rival ring love, but in addition there is the rigid parent who sternly and at last mergersly opposes the natural desires of a child, whom he has promised to another. Where Maria is idyllic, poetic, flowing, smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by a sentimentalism, Inocencia by no means the void of poetry is romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as Maria is peaceful.

14:05There is in each book a similar importance of the background. In Inocencia the point of honor is quite as strong and vindictive as in any play of the Spanish golden age. Maria shares with Inocencia relieving touches of humor and excellent pages of character description. Tones, Winshiliamento is a violent antithesis to the work just considered. Here the politician speaks. In passages of set hire that become so acrimonious at times as to indicate real personages, the wave of speculation that swept Argentinian Brazil is analyzed and held up to scorn. The novel is really a piece of historical muck-raking and was longed an object of resentment in the Republic. Everything from Tones Pen reveals a coals communication with nature and intimate understanding of the psychology of the vast regions inhabitants. His shorter tales, which I hope later to present to the English reading public, reveal these powers at their best.

15:06Now it is a soldier who goes to war, only, like a military ennog ardent, to return and find his sweetheart in another's arms. Now it is a clergyman, the vicar of sorrows, who, in the luxuriant environment of his charge, suffers the tortures of carnal temptations with the spirit at last triumphant over the flesh. Whatever of artifice there is in these tales is overcome. One of his most sympathetic critics tells us by the poetics and serity of the whole. Tonatu has been likened to Pierre Lothi for his exotic flavor. In Yerece Aguana we have a miniature in Ossencia. Yerece and Alberto Montereo fall in love and marry. The latter has been cured at the home of Yerece of swim fever. The inevitable, however, occurs and Montereo hears the call of civilization. The marriage, according to the custom of the tribe into which Montereo has wed, is dissolved by the man alone. He returns to his old life and she dies of grief.

16:09A work that may stand beside In Ossencia and Vedicimus scenes from Amazon life as a successful national product is English the Sousus Umisionario. Antonio de Morais in this story is not so strong in will as Tonais vicar of sorrows. Antonio is a missionary with the vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle, and duty in the tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon ceases his body, slowly, agonizingly, but surely he succumbs to the enchantment overpowered by the life around him. Since Machado de Assis, who should proceed as he vido, and coelho netto, who should follow him, if strict chronological order were being observed, are both referred to in Section 3, which deals particularly with the authors represented in the sample assortment of short tales they are here omitted. With the appearance of Umulato, by Aluisio Azhevedo, 1857 to 1912, the literature of Brazil prepared for such a reorientation by the direct influence of the great Portuguese, Essegykeroish, and the Mimzola, was definitely steered toward naturalism.

17:20In Aluisio Azhevedo, Césbene dito costa, one finds neither the poetry of José de Alencar, nor did the lficacy, I should even say, orcness of Macedo, nor the sentimental pre-chazity of Tonais, nor the subtle irony of Machado de Assis. His phrase is brittle, lacking lyricism, tenderness, dreaminess, but it is dynamic, energetic, expressive, and at times sensual to the point of sweet delirium. Umulato, though it was the work of a youth in his early 20s, has been acknowledged as a solid, well-constructed example of Brazilian realism. There is a note of humor, as well as a lesson in criticism in the author's anecdote, told in his foreword to the fourth edition, about the provincial editor who advised the youthful author to give up writing and hire himself out on a farm. This was all the notice he received from his native province, Maranhão, yet Azhevedo grew to be one of the few Brazilian authors who supported himself by his pen.

18:22When Brazilian letters are better known in this nation, among Azhevedo's work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the Livro Juma Sogra, the book of a mothering law. And when the literature of these United States is at last, if ever indeed, released from the childish, hypocritical, periodanic inhibitions forced upon it by quasi-official societies, we may even relish from among Azhevedo's long shelf of novels such as sensuous product as Cuchusu. I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Gras Arénhas Kanan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Gulyomo Ferreros Fulsam, praise of it, as the great American novel. For South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will of the wisp. Both Maria and Inosensia have been mentioned for that honor. There is a distinct basis for comparison between Inosensia and the more famous Spanish-American tale from Colombia.

19:26Between these and Kanan, however, there is little similarity, if one overlooked the poetic atmosphere that glimmers all three. Arénhas masterpiece is a far broader conception than the other two. It adds to their lyricism an epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt in the treatment. It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly strict with a powerful realism. This should, however, connotate no enab mingling of genres. The style seems to be called for by the very nature of the vast theme, that moment at which the native and the immigrant strain begin to merge in the land of the future, the promised land that the protagonists are destined never to enter, even as Moses himself. Upon Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, beheld Kanan and died in the throes of the Great Vision. Kanan is of those novels that center about an enthralling idea. The type which devotes much attention to the pictures of life and customs, to discussions upon present realities and ultimate purposes, is perhaps more frequent among Spanish and Portuguese-Americans than among our own readers who are apt to be over-insistent in their demands for swift, visible action.

20:44Yet, in the hands of a master, it poses as no less interest than the more obvious type of fiction, for ideas pose as more life than the persons who are moved by them. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at metals. The idea that carries milk out from the old world to the new is an ideal of human brotherhood, hyperpise and dissatisfaction with the old, the generate world. In the state of Aspide to Santo where the German colonists are dominant, he plans a simple life that shall drink inspiration in the youth of a new, virgin continent. He falls in with another German, Lens, whose outlook upon life is at first the very opposite to Mucau's blend of Christianity and a certain liberal socialism. The strange milieu reads in both an intellectual langer that vents itself in long discussions, in breeding contemplation, merges of the spirit.

21:50Mucau is gradually struck with something wrong in the settlement. Little by little it begins to dawn upon him that something of the old world hypocrisy, fraud and insensivity is contaminating this supposedly virgin territory. Here he discovers no paradise, Allahusso, no natural man untainted by the ills of civilization. Graphed is a rampant as in any district of the world across the sea. Cruelty is a rife. His spirit is aroused by the plight of Mary, a desistitude servant who is betrayed by the son of her employers. Not only does the scamp desert her when she most needs his protection and acknowledgement, but he is silent when his equally vicious parents drive her forth to a life of intense hardship. She is spurned at every door and reduced to bagry. Her child is born under the most distressing circumstances, and under conditions that strike the note of horror, the infant is lain before her very eyes while she gazes helplessly on.

22:52Mary is accused of infanticide, and since she lacks witnesses, she is placed in a very difficult position. Moreover, the father of her child bends every effort to loosen the harshest measures of the community against her, whereupon Mughal, whose heart is open to the sufferings of the universe, has another opportunity to behold men's inhumanity to woman. His spirit turns to what Pide is akin to. He facts her release from jail, and together they go forth upon a journey that ends in the delirium of death. The promised land had proved the mirage, at least for the present, and it is upon this indecisive note that the book ends. Ferreros' introduction, though short, is substantial and to the point. It is natural that he should have taken such a liking to the book, for Aranya's work is of intense interest to the reader who looks for psychological power, and Ferreros himself is the exponent of history as psychology, rather than as economic materialism.

23:52The critics, he says, will judge the literary merits of this novel. As a literary amateur, I will point out among its qualities the beauty of its style and its descriptions, the purity of the psychological analysis, the depth of the thoughts and the reflections of which the novel is full, and among its faults, a certain disproportion between the different part of the book, and an ending which is too vague, indefinite and unexpected. But its literary qualities seem to me to be of secondary importance to the profound and incontrovertible idea that forms the kernel of the book. Here in Europe we are accustomed to say that modern civilization develops itself in America more freely than in Europe, for in the former country it has not to surmount the obstacle of an older society, firmly established as in the case of the latter. Because of this, we call America the country of the young, and we consider the new world as the great force which decomposes the old European social organization.

24:53That idea is, as Ferreros points out, an illusion due to distance. He points out too that here is everywhere an old America struggling against a new one, and this is very curious. The new America, which upsets traditions, is formed above all by the European immigrants who seek a place for themselves in the country of their adoption, whereas the real Americans represent the conservative tendencies. Europe exerts an American society through its immigrants the same dissolve in action which America exerts through its novelties and its example on the old civilization of Europe. The point is very well taken and contains the germ of a great novel of the United States, and just as Kanan stands by itself in Brazilian literature, so might such a novel achieve permanence in our own. Ferreros quite write in indicating the great non-literary importance of the novel, though not all readers will agree with him as to the excessive vagueness of the end. Hardly any other type of ending would have befitted a novel that treats of transition, of a landscape that dazzles and enthralls, of possibilities that founder, not through the malignance of fate, but through the stupidity of men.

26:05There is an epic swirl to the finale that reminds one of the disappearance of an ancient deity in the pillar of dust, for an uncommon man like Moucao and an uncommon and was called for. Numerous questions are touched upon in the course of the leisurely narrative, everywhere opening up new vistas of thought, for Aranya is philosophically critically inclined. His training is cosmopolitan as his life has been. He knows the great Germans, Scandinavians, Belgians and Russians. His native exuberance has been tempered by serenity that is the product of European influence. He is some 52 years of age, has served his nation at Christiania, as minister, at the hagg, and as a leader in the allied cause. He is therefore an acknowledged and proven spokesman. The author of Kan'an has done other things, among which this book, which has long been known in French and Spanish, stands out as a document that marks an epoch in Brazilian history, as well as a stage in Brazilian literature.

27:05Whether it is the great American novel is of interest only to literary politicians and pigeonholers. It is a great novel, whether of America or Europe, and that suffices for the lover of Bell Latre. In considering the work of such writers as these and the authors represented in this little pioneer volume, one should bear continually in mind the many handicaps under which authorship labors in Portuguese and Spanish America. A small reading public, lack of publishers, widespread prevalence of illiteracy, instability of politics. Under the circumstances, it is not so much to be wondered at that the best work is of such a high average, as that it was done at all. For in nations where education is so limited and illiteracy is so prevalent, the manifold functions which in more highly developed nations are performed by many are performed by few. Hence, the spectacle in the new Spanish and Portuguese world as in the old of men and women who are at once journalists, novelists, dramatists, politicians, soldiers, poets, and whatnot else.

28:14Such a versatility often joined to a literary perlixity, no doubt serves to lower the artistic worth of works produced under such conditions. In connection with the special character of the tales included in the present sample of modern Brazilian short stories, particularly those by Machadoja Sige and Medeza Boquerque, it is interesting to keep in mind the popularity of Poe and Hawthorne in South America. The introspection of these men, as of the Mopassan and Kindred spirits, appeals to a light characteristic of the Brazilians. Such inner seeking, however, such preoccupation with psychological problems does not often in these writers reach the point of morbidity which we have become accustomed to expect in the novels and tales of the Russians. Stories like the attendance confession are written with a refinement of thought as well as of language. They are not, as so much of Brazilian literature must perforce seem to this stranger's mind, exotic.

29:14They belong to the letters of the world by virtue of the human appeal of the subject and the mastery of their treatment. Chief among the writers he represented stands Joaquim Marilla Machadoja Sige, 1839-1908. Born in Rio de Janeiro of poor parents, he was early beset with the fickle teas. His soon found his way into surroundings where his literary tastes were awakened and where he came into contact with some of the leading spirits of the day. The noted literary historians of his country, Siviu Homeru and João Hibado, in their Compendue de Stoida de Literatura Brasileira, find the writing of his first period of little value. The next decade from his 30th to the 40th year is called transitional. With the year 1879, however, Machadoja Sige began a long phase of maturity that was to last for 30 years. It was during this fruitful period that Memoria Sposta de Majibar Escubas, King Casborba, Histórias de San Data, Don Casmovo, Varys Histórias, and other notable works were produced.

30:22The three tales by Machadoja Sige in this volume are translated from his Varys Histórias. That same bitter sweet philosophy and gracious, if penetrating irony which inform these tales, are characteristic of his larger romances. Four volumes of poetry sustain his reputation as a poet. His found, by Homeru and Hibado, to be very correct and somewhat cold in his verse. He took little delight in nature and lacked the passionate, robber's temperament that projected itself upon pages of ardent beauty. In the best of his prose works, however, he penetrates as deep as any of his countrymen into the abyss of the human soul. The judgment of Verysimo upon Machadoja Sige, the first somewhat from that of his distinguished compatriots. Both because of the importance of Machadoja Sige to Brazilian literature, and as an insight into Verysimo's delightful critical style, I translate somewhat at length from that writer. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire?

31:32Try them all only at Metaels. With Varys Histórias, he says in his studies of Brazilian letters. So you know Machadoja Sige published his 15th volume and his 5th collection of tales. To say that in our literature, Machadoja Sige is a figure apart, that he stands with good reason, first among our writers of fiction, that he possesses a rare faculty of assimilation and evolution, which makes him a writer of the second romantic generation, always a contemporary, a modern, without, on this account, having sacrificed anything to the latest literary fashion, or copied some brand new aesthetic, above all conserving his own distinct singular personality, is but to repeat what has been said many times already. All these judgments are confirmed by his latest book, wherein may be noted the same impeccable correctness of language, the same firm grasp upon form, the same abundancy, force and originality of thought, that make of him the only thinker among our writers of fiction, the same sad, bitter irony.

32:38After this, there was published another book by single Machadoja Sige, Ya Ya Gassia. Although this is really a new edition, we may well speak of it here, since the first published long before is no longer remembered by the public. Moreover, this book has the delightful and honest charm of being in the writer's first manner. But let us understand it once, this reference to Machadoja Sige's first manner. In this author, more than once is justified the critical concept of the unity of works displayed by the great writers. All of Machadoja Sige is practically present in his early works. In fact, he did not change, he scarcely developed. He is the most individual, the most personal, the most himself of our writers. All the germs of this individuality that was to attain in Barajkubas, in Kinkaj Bohrba, in the Papais Avulsus, and in Varys' history its maximum of virtuosity, may be discovered in his first poems and in his earliest tales.

33:38His second manner, then, of which these books are the best example, is only the logical, natural, spontaneous development of his first, or rather, it is the first manner with less of the romantic and more of the critical tendencies. The distinguishing trait of Machadoja Sige is that he is, in our literature, an artist and a philosopher. Up to a short time ago, he was the only one entering to such a description. Those who come after him, proceed consciously and unconsciously from him, some of them being mere worthless imitators. In this genre, if I am not misemploying that term, he remained without a peer. Add that this philosopher is a pessimist by temperament and by conviction, and you will have as complete a characterization as it is possible to design of so strong and complex of figure as his, in two strokes of the pen. Yajagashia, like his suhaisong and Ilena, is a romantic account, perhaps the most romantic written by the author. Not only the most romantic, but perhaps the most emotional.

34:44In the books that followed, it is easy to see how the emotion is, one might say, systematically repressed by the sad irony of a disillusioned man's realism. Vedicim goes on to imply that such a work as this merits comparison with the humane books of Tolstoy, but this only on the surface. For at the bottom, it contains the author's misanthropy. A social, amiable misanthropy, curious about everything, interested in everything, what is, in the final analysis, a way of loving mankind, without us teaming it. The excellency with which the author of Yajagashia writes our language is proverbial. The highest distinction of the genius of Masha'da Jaseeje in Brazilian literature is that he is the only truly universal writer we possess without ceasing on that account to be really Brazilian. While the Brazilian Academy of Ladders was founded in 1897, Masha'da Jaseeje was unanimously elected president and held the position until his death.

35:48Olivier Dalima, who lectured at Harvard during the college season of 1915-1916, and who is himself one of the great intellectual forces of contemporary Brazil, has written of Masha'da Jaseeje. By his extraordinary talent as writer, by his profound literary dignity, by the unity of a life that was entirely devoted to the cult of intellectual beauty, and by the prestige exerted about him by his work and by his personality, Masha'da Jaseeje succeeded, despite a nature that was averse to acclaim and little inclined to public appearance, in being considered and respected as the first among his country's men of letters. The head, if that word cannot denote the idea, of a youthful literature which already possesses its traditions and cherishes above all its glories. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my thumbs.

36:53His life was one of the most regulated and peaceful after he had given up active journalism, for like so many others, he began his career as a political reporter, paragraph and dramatic critic. Queilu Népto, on Selmohibish 1864, is known to his countrymen as a professor of literature at Hüje Janilo. His career has covered the fields of journalism, politics, education and fiction. Although his work is of an even worth, no doubt because of his unseizing productivity, he is reckoned by so exacting a critic as verisible as one of Brazil's most important writers, one of the few in fact, that will be remembered by posterity. Among his best-liked stories are death, the federal capital, paradise, the conquest and the rudge. Népto's short stories are very popular. At one time, every other youth in Brazil was imitating his every mannerism. His particular ill felicitous and his descriptions of tropical nature which teamed with glowing life and vivid picturesqueness.

37:58Queilu Népto is considered one of the chief writers of the modern epoch. He is really an idealist, writes very simple, but an idealist who has drunk deeply of the strong, dangerous milk of French naturalism. He sees nature through his soul rather than his eyes and has been much influenced by the mystics of Russia, Germany and Scandinavia. His style is derived chiefly from the Portuguese group of which Asagicato-Eish is the outstanding figure, and his language has been much affected by this attachment to the modern country. His chief stylistic quality is an epic note, tempered by a sentimental lyricism. In his book Le Hormau-Brazil, the novel in Brazil, which I believe the author himself translated from the original Portuguese into French, benedito Costa, after considering Aluiso Zévido as the exponent of Brazilian naturalism and the apesist of the racist sexual instincts, turns to Queilu Népto's neo-romanticism as the eternal praise of nature, the incessant exaggerated exaltation of the landscape.

39:03In Népto, he perceives the most Brazilian, the least European of the republic's authors. One may say of him what ten set of Boussac, a sort of literary elephant capable of bearing prodigious burdens but heavy-fruited. And in fact, he reveals a great resemblance to Boussac, a relative Boussac for the exclusive use of a people, but a Boussac nonetheless. Despite his lack of ideas, his mixture of archaisms, neologisms, his exuberance, his slow development of plots, his lack of proportion, noticeably, naturally, and his longer works that are in his short fiction, his tense preeminent as a patron of the nation's intellectual youth, and as the remencer of its opulent imagination. Medeiros al buquehque is considered by some critics to be the leading exponent in the country of the manner of de Mopassan, enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar Olympo. He has been director general of public instruction in Rio de Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco.

40:13With the surprising versatility of so many South Americans, he has achieved a reputation as poet, novelist, dramatist, publicist, journalist, and philosopher. The part that women have played in the progress of the South American republics is as interesting as it is little known. The name of the world's largest river, the Amazon, or more exactly speaking, the Amazon, stands as a less-interviewed to the bravery of the early women from the explorer Orelana encountered during his conquest of the mighty flood. For he named the river in honor of the tribe's fighting heroines. Centuries later, when one by one the provinces of South America rose to liberate themselves from the Spanish yoke, the women again played a noble part in the various revolutions. The statue in Colombia to Policarpa Salavarieta is with a symbol of South American gratitude to a host of women who fought side by side with their husbands during the trying days of the early 19th century.

41:14One of them, Manuela Latucumana, was even made an officer in the Argentine army. If women, however, have enshrined themselves in the patriotic annals of the South American republics, they have shown that they are no less the companions of men in the more or less agreeable arts of peace. When one considers the great percentage of a literacy that still prevails in South America, and the inferior intellectual position which for years has been the lot of women, particularly in the Spanish and Portuguese nations, it is surprising that women's prominence in the literary world should be what it is. The name of the original 17th century spirit, known as Saurines de la Cruz, in Mexico, is part of Spanish literature, only recently has been indicated as Renatians' first folklorist and feminist. Her poems have found their way into the anthologies of universal poetry. The most distinguished Spanish poetess of the 19th century, Jardrude's Gomez de Ávila Neda, was a Cuban by birth, going later to Spain, where she was readily received as one of the nation's leading literary lights.

42:21Her poetry is remarkable for its virile passion. Her novel, Saba, has been called the Spanish Uncle Tom's Cabin, for its stirring protest against slavery and its idealization of the oppressed race. She was a woman of striking beauty, yet so vigorous in her work, and the prosecution of it, that one facetious critic was Lachwick's claim, this woman is a good deal of a man. But South America has its native candidate for the title of Spanish Uncle Tom's Cabin, and this too is the work of a woman. Clorinda Mato's abe sin nido, birds without a nest, is by one of Peru's most talented women, and exposes the disgraceful exploitation of the Indians by conscience-less citizens and priests, who had sunk beneath their holy calling. It seems indeed that fiction as a whole in Peru has been left to the pens of the women. Such names as Juan Manuel Guiritti de Belzu, Clorinda Mato, and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonero, stand for what it is best in the South American novel.

43:23The epoch in which these women wrote, late 19th century, and the natural feminine tendency to put the house in order, whether it be the domestic or the national variety, led to such stories as Carboneros' last consequences, El Conspirador, and Blanca Sol. The first of these is an indictment of the Peruvian vice of gambling. The second throws an interesting light upon the origin of much of the internal strife of South America, and portrays a revolution brought on by the personal disappointment of a politician. Blanca Sol has been called a Peruvian Madame Bovahi. Although Brazil has not yet produced any amazins of poetry or fiction, to stand beside such names as Sorrenez de la Cruz, or Gerrard Trudez Gomez de Avaliáneda, has contributed some significant names to the women writers of Latin America. Not least among these is Carmen Dolores, pen name of Emilio Moncóvo Bandera de Mello, who was born in 1852 at Rio de Janeiro, and died in 1910, after achieving a wide reputation in the field of the short story, novel and Féuilleton.

44:31In addition to these activities, she made herself favorably known in the press of Rio, São Paulo, and Pérena Mbucco. Her career started with a novel confession. Other works are this struggle, a country drama, and Brazilian legends. The story in this volume is taken from a collection entitled The Complex Hole. The present selection of tales makes no pretense at completeness, finality, or infallibility of choice. This little book is, so to speak, merely a modest sample case. Some of the tales first appeared in English in the Boston Evening transcript, and the strat for journal Boston, to which organs I am indebted for permission to reprint them. Isaac Goldberg rocks very messages its end of preface.

45:31Section 1 of Brazilian Tales This Librefax recording is in the public domain, recording by Lini, Brazilian tales by various authors translated by Isaac Goldberg, Section 1. The attendance confession by Joaquim Madilla Machado-Jaseesh, First President of the Brazilian Academy of Ladders. So it really seems to you that what happened to me in 1860 is worthwhile writing down? Very well. I'll tell you the story, but on the condition that you do not divulge it before my death, you will not have to wait long, a week at most. I'm a marked man. I could have told you the story of my whole life, which holds many other interesting details. But for that, there would be needed time, courage, and paper.

46:31There is plenty of paper indeed, but my courage is at low-web, and as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared to the life of a candle flame. Soon, tomorrow's sun will rise, the demon's sun, as in peniturable with life itself. So goodbye, my dear sir. Read this, and bear me no ill will. Pardon me those things that will appear evil to you, and do not complain too much if there is a sale that is a griable order, which is not exactly that of the rose. You ask me for a human document. Here it is. Ask me for neither the empire of the great mogul, nor a photograph of the macabees, but request, if you will, my dead men's shoes.

47:43You already know that this took place in 1860, the year before about the month of August, at the age of 42, I had become a theologian that is, I copied the theological studies of a priest at Nitheroi, an old college chum, who thus tactfully gave me my board and lodging. In that same month of August, 1859, he received the letter from the vicar of a small town in the interior, asking if he knew of an intelligent, the screed, and patient person, who would be willing in return for generous wages, to serve as a tendon to the invalid Colonyl Philisburg. The priest proposed that I take the place, and I accepted it eagerly, for I was tired of copying Latin quotations and eclosistic formulas.

48:43First I went to Hiyoji-janeda, to take leave of a brother who lived at the capital, and from there I departed for the little village of the interior. When I arrived there, I heard bad news concerning the Colonyl. He was pictured to me as a disagreeable, harsh, exacting fellow, nobody could endure him, not even his own friends. He had used more attendance than medicines. In fact, he had broken the faces of two of them, but to all this I replied that I had no fear of persons in good health, still less of invulids. So, after first visiting the vicar, who confirmed all that I had heard, and recommended to me charity and forbearance, I turned toward the Colonyl's residence. I found him on the veranda of his house, stretched out on a chair and suffering greatly. He received me fairly well.

49:50At first he examined me silently, piercing me with his two fill-in eyes. Then a kind of malicious smile spread over his features, which were rather hard. Finally, he declared to me that all the attendance he had ever engaged in his service, hadn't been worth a button. That they slept too much, were impudent and spent their time courting the servants. Two of them were even thieves. And you, are you a thief? No, sir. Then he asked me my name, scarcely had I uttered it when he made a gesture of astonishment. Your name is Colombo? No, sir. My name is Procopius de Gómi Shvalongo. Valongo? He came to the conclusion that this was no Christian name, and proposed thens forth to call me simply Procopius.

50:57I replied that it should be just as he pleased. If I recall this incident, it is not only because it seems to me to give a good picture of the Colombo, but also to show you that my reply made a very good impression upon him. The next day he told the vicar so, adding that he had never had a more sympathetic attendant. The fact is, we lived a regular honeymoon that lasted one week. From the dawn of the eighth day I knew the life of my predecessors, a dog's life. I no longer slept. I no longer thought of anything. I was showered with insults and left at them from time to time with an air of resignation and submission, for I had discovered that this was a way of pleasing him. His impertinences proceeded as much from his malady as from his temperament. His illness was of the most complicated. He suffered from aneurysm, rheumatism, and three or four minor factions.

52:13He was nearly 60, and since he had been five years old, had been accustomed to having everybody at his back and call. That he was surly, one could well forgive, but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to leave, only the opportunity was lacking. But that came soon enough. One day, when I was a bit late in giving him a massage, he took his cane and struck me with it two or three times. That was the last straw. I told him on the spot that I was through with him and I went to pack my trunk. He came later to my room. He begged me to remain assured me that there wasn't anything to be angry at, that I must excuse the ill-hymnredness of old age.

53:20He insisted so much that I agreed to stay. I am nearing the end, Prokopu. He said to me that evening. I can't live much longer. I am upon the verge of the grave. You will go to my burial, Prokopu. Under no circumstances will I excuse you. You shall go. You shall pray over my tomb. And if you don't, he added, laughing. My ghost will come at night and pull you by the legs. Do you believe in souls of the other world, Prokopu? Nonsense. And why don't you, you blockhead? He replied passionately, with the standard eyes. That is how he was in his peaceful intervals. What he was during his attack, Savangar, you may well imagine. He hit me no more with his cane, but his insults were just saying, if not worse.

54:24With time I became hardened. I no longer heated anything. I was an ignoramus, a camel, a bumpkin, an idiot, a lagerhead. I was everything. It must further be understood that I alone was favored with these pretty names. He had no relatives. There had been an nephew, but he had died of consumption. As the friends, those who came now and then to flatter him and indulge his whims, made him but short visit, five or ten minutes at the most. I alone was always present to receive his dictionary of insults. More than once I resolved to leave him, but as the vicar would exhort me not to abandon the colonel,

55:24I always yielded in the end. Not only were our relations becoming very much strained, but I was in a hurry to get back to he-ugitaneer. At 42 years of age, one does not easily accustom himself to a perpetual seclusion with a brittle, snarling old envelope in the depths of a remote village. Just to give you an idea of my isolation, let it suffice to inform you that I didn't even read the newspapers. Outside of some more or less important piece of news that was brought to the colonel, I knew nothing of what was doing in the world. I therefore yearned to get back to he-ugitaneer at the first opportunity, even at the cost of breaking with the vicar. And I may as well add, since I am here making a general confession, that having spent nothing of my wages, I was itching to dissipate them at the capital.

56:34Very probably, my chance was approaching. The colonel was rapidly getting worse. He made his will to notary receiving almost as many insults as did I. The invalid's treatment became more strict. Short intervals of peace and rest became rarer than ever for me. Already I had lost the meager measure of pity that made me forget the old invalid's excesses. Within me there ceased the cauldron of a version and hatred. At the beginning of the month of August, I decided definitely to leave. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's.

57:34The vicar and the doctor finally accepting my explanations. Asked me but a few days more service. I gave them a month. At the end of that time I would depart, whatever might be the condition of the invalid. The vicar promised to find a substitute for me. You'll see now what happened. On the evening of the 24th of August the colonel had a violent attack of anger. He struck me. He called me the violist's names. He threatened to shoot me. Finally he threw in my face a plate of porridge that was too cold for him. The plates struck the wall and broke into a thousand fragments. You pay me for it, you thief! He bellowed. For a long time he grumbled. Towards eleven o'clock he gradually fell asleep.

58:40While he slept I took a book out of my pocket. A translation of an old darling guru man's which I had found lying about. And began to read it in his room at a small distance from his bed. I was to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine. But whether it was due to fatigue or to the influence of the book, I too, before reaching the second page, fell asleep. The cries of the colonel awoke me with a start. In an instant I was up. He, apparently in a delirium, continued to utter the same cries. Finally he seized his water bottle and threw it at my face. I could not get out of the way in time. The bottle hit me in the left cheek and the pain was so acute that I almost lost consciousness.

59:42With a leap I rushed upon the invalid. I tightened my hands around his neck. He struggled several moments. I strangled him. When I beheld that he no longer breathed, I stepped back in terror. I cried out, but nobody heard me. Then approaching the bad ones more, I shook him so as to bring him back to life. It was too late. The aneurysm had burst and the colonel was dead. I went into the adjoining room and for two hours I did not dare to return. It is impossible for me to express all that I felt during that time. It was intense to perfection, a kind of vague and vague in delirium.

1:00:42It seemed to me that I saw faces grinning on the walls. I heard muffled voices, the cries of the victim, the cries uttered before the struggle, and during its wild moments continued to reverberate within me. In whatever direction I turned seemed to shake with convulsions. Do not imagine that I am inventing pictures or aiming at a verbal style. I swear to you that I heard distinctly voices that were crying at me. Murderer, murderer. All was quiet in the house. The tick tick of the clock very even, slow, dryly matricle increased the silence and solitude. I put my ear to the door of the room in hope of hearing a groan, a word, an insult,

1:01:45anything that will be a sign of life that might bring back peace to my conscience. I was ready to let myself be struck, ten, twenty, a hundred times by the colonel's hand. But nothing, all was silent. I began to pace the room aimlessly. I sat down, I brought my hands despairingly to my head. I repented, ever having come to the place. Curse to be the hour in which I ever accepted such a position. I cried, and I flamed with resentment against the priest of Niteroi, against the doctor, the vicar, against all those who had procured the place for me and forced me to remain there so long. They too, I convinced myself, were accomplices in my crime.

1:02:50As the silence finally terrified me, I opened the window, in the hope of hearing, at least, the murmuring of the wind. But no wind was blowing. The night was peaceful. The stars were sparkling within the difference of those who removed their heads before a passing funeral procession and continued to speak of other things. I remained at the window for some time. My elbows on the sill, my gaze seeking to penetrate the night, forcing myself to make a mental summary of my life, so that I might escape the present agony. I believe it was only then that I thought clearly about the penalty of my crime. I saw myself already being accused and threatened with dire punishment. From this moment, fear complicated my feeling of remorse.

1:03:53I felt my hairs stand on end. A few minutes later, I saw three or four human shapes spying at me from the terrace, where they seemed to be waiting in ambush. I withdrew. The shapes vanished into the air. It had been an hallucination. Before a daybreak, I bandaged the wounds that I had received in the face. Then only did I pluck up enough courage to return to the other room, twice I started, only to turn back. But it must be done, so I entered. Even then, I did not at first go to the bed. My legs shook, my heart pounded. I thought of flight, but that would have been a confession of the crime.

1:04:53It was on the contrary very important for me to hide all traces of it. I approached the bed. I looked at the corpse with its widely distended eyes and its mouth gaping, as if uttering the eternal reproach of the centuries. Cain, what has thou done with thy brother? I discovered on the neck the marks of my nails. I buttoned the shirt to the top and threw the bed cover up to the dead man's chin. Then I called the servant and told him that the colonel had died towards morning. I sent him to notify the vicar and the doctor. The first idea that came to me was to leave as soon as possible, under the pretext that my brother was ill.

1:05:54And in reality I had received several days before, from he, a letter telling me that he was not at all well. But I considered that my immediate departure might arouse suspicion, and I decided to wait. I laid out the corpse myself with the assistance of an old, near-sighted negro. I remained continually in the room of the dead. I trembled, lest something out of the way should be discovered. I wanted to assure myself that no mistrust could be read upon the faces of the others, but I did not dare to look any person in the eye. Everything made me impatient, the going and coming of those who, on tiptoe, crossed the room, their whisk-strings, the ceremonies and the prayers of the vicar.

1:06:55The hour having come, eye closed the coffin, but with trembling hands, so trembling that somebody noticed it, and commented upon it, aloud, with pity. Poor procopio, despite what he has suffered from his master, he is strongly moved. It sounded like irony to me. I was anxious to have it all over with. We went out. Once in the street, the passing from semi-obscurity to daylight, dazed me and I staggered. I began to fear that it would no longer be possible for me to conceal the crime. I kept my eyes steadily fixed upon the ground and took my place in their procession. When all was over, I breathed once more. I was at peace with men. But I was not at peace with my conscience, and the first nights, naturally, I spent in restlessness and affliction.

1:08:04Need I tell you that I hasten to return to Hiyoji Janero, and that I dwelt there in terror and suspense, although far removed from the scene of my crime. I never smiled. I scarcely spoke. I ate very little. I suffered hallucinations and nightmares. Let the dead rest in peace, they would save to me. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. It is out of all reason to show so much melancholy. And I was happy to find how people interpreted my symptoms, and praised the dead man highly, calling him a good soul, certainly in truth, but with the heart of gold.

1:09:07And as I spoke in such wise, I convinced myself, at least for a few moments at a time. Another interesting phenomenon was taking place within me. I tell it to you, because you will perhaps make some useful deduction from it. That was, although I had very little religion in me, I had a mass song for the eternal rest of the colonel, at the church of the blessed sacrament. I sent out no invitations to it. I did not whisper a word of it to anybody. I went there alone. I knelt during the whole service, and made many signs of the cross. I paid the priest double, and distributed alms at the door, all in the name of the deceased.

1:10:07I wished to deceive nobody. The proof of this lies the fact that I did all this without letting any other know. To complete this incident, I may add that I never mentioned the colonel without repeating, may his soul rest in peace. And I told several funny anecdotes about him, some amusing capprises of his. About a week after my arrival at you, I received a letter from the vicar. He announced that the will of the colonel had been opened, and that I was there designated as his soul heir. Imagine my stupid faction. I was sure that I had read wrongly. I showed it to my brother, to friends.

1:11:08They all read the same thing. It was there in black and white. I was really the soul heir of the colonel. Then I suddenly thought that this was a trap to catch me. But then I considered that there were other ways of arresting me, if the crime had been discovered. Moreover, I knew the vicar's honesty, and I was sure that he would not be a party to such a plan. I reread the letter five times, ten times, a hundred times. It was true. I was the colonel's soul heir. How much was he worth, my brother, ask me? I don't know, but I know that he was very wealthy.

1:12:10Really, he's shown that he was a very true friend to you. He certainly was. He was. Thus, by a strange irony of fate, all the colonel's wealth came into my hands. At first, I thought of refusing the legacy. It seemed odious to take a suit of that inheritance. It seemed worse than the reward of a hired assassin. For three days this thought obsessed me. But more and more, I was thrust against this consideration, that my refusal would not fail to awake suspicion. Finally, I settled upon a compromise. I would accept inheritance, and would distribute it in small sums, secretly. This was not merely scruple on my part.

1:13:13It was also the desire to redeem my crime by virtuous deeds. And it seemed the only way to recover my peace of mind, and feel that accounts were straight. I made hurried preparations, and left. As I neared little village, the sad event returned, obscenity, to my memory. Everything about the place, as I looked at it once again, suggested tragic deeds. At every turning the road, I seemed to see the ghost of the colonel, Lum. And despite myself, I evoked in my imagination, his cries, his struggles, his looks on that horrible night of the crime. Crime or struggle, really. It was rather a struggle.

1:14:18I had been attacked, I had defended myself, and in self-defense, it had been an unfortunate struggle, a genuine tragedy. This idea gripped me, and I reviewed all the abuse he had heaped upon me. I counted the blows, the names. It was not the colonel's fault that I knew well. It was his affliction that made him so pee-fish, and even wicked. But I pardoned all, everything. The worst of it was the end of that fatal night. I also considered that, in any case, the colonel had not long to live. His days were numbered. Did not he himself feel that?

1:15:20Didn't he say every now and then? How much longer have I to live? Two weeks, or one, perhaps less? This was not life. It was slow agony. If one may so name the continual martyrdom of that poor man. And who knows, who can say that this struggle and his death were not simply a coincidence? That was, after all, quite possible. It was even most probable. Careful weighing of the matter show that it couldn't have been otherwise. At length, this idea too, engraved itself upon my mind. Something tugged at my heart as I entered the village. I wanted to run back, but I dominated my emotions, and I pressed forward.

1:16:21I was received with a shower of congratulations. The vicar communicated to me the particulars of the will, and numerated the pious gifts, and, as he spoke, praised the Christian forbearance and the faithfulness which I had shown in my care of the deceased, who, despite his temper and brutality, had so well demonstrated his gratitude. Certainly, I said, looking nervously around, I was astounded. Everybody praised my conduct, such patience, such devotion. The first formalities of the inventory detained me for a while. I chose a solicitor. Things followed their course in regular fashion. During this time there was much talk of the colonel.

1:17:23People came and told me tales about him. But, without observing the priest's moderation, I defended the memory of the colonel. I recalled his good qualities, his virtues, had he not been austere. A austere, they would interrupt nonsense, his dead, and it's all over now, but he was a regular demon. And they would cite incidents and relate the colonel's perversities, some of which were nothing less than extraordinary. Need I confess it? At first, I listened to all this talk with great curiosity. Then, a queer pleasure penetrated my heart, a pleasure from which, sincerely, I tried to escape, and I continued to defend the colonel.

1:18:23I explained him. I attributed much of the fault-finding to local animosity. I admitted, yes, I admitted, that he had been a trifle-exacting, somewhat violent. Somewhat, wow, he was as furious as his snake, exclaimed the barber, and all, the collector, the apothecary, the clerk, all were of the same opinion, and they would start to relay other anecdotes. They reviewed the entire life of the deceased. The old folks took particular delight in recalling the cruelties of his youth, and that queer pleasure, intimate, mute, insidious, grew within me, a sort of moral tapeworm, his coils I tore out in vain,

1:19:26for they would immediately form again, and take firmer hold than ever. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. The formalities of the inventory afforded me a little relief. Moreover, public opinion was so unanimously unfavorable to the colonel. That little by little, the place lost the legubrious aspect that had at first struck me. At last, I entered into possession of the legacy, which I converted into lentitles and cash. Several months had elapsed, and the idea of distributing the inheritance in charity

1:20:27and pierced the nation so as by no means so strong, as it had at first been. It even seemed to me that this would be sheer expectation. I revised my initial plan. I gave away several insignificant sums to the poor. I presented the village church with a few new ornaments. I gave several thousand francs to the sacred house of mercy, etc. I did not forget to erect a monument upon the colonel's grave. A very simple monument, all marble, the work of a new palitant sculptor who remained at Rio until 1866, and who has since died, I believe, in Paraguay. Years have gone by. My memory has become vague and unreliable.

1:21:32Sometimes I think of the colonel, but without feeling again the terrors of those early days, all the doctors to whom I have described his afflictions have been unanimous as regards the inevitable end in store for the invalid, and were indeed surprised that he should so long have resisted. It is just possible that I may have involuntarily exaggerated the description of his various symptoms. But the truth is that he was sure of sudden death, even had this fatality not occurred. Goodbye, my dear sir. If you deem these notes not totally devoid of value, reward me for them with a marble tomb

1:22:32and place there for my apiative this variant which I have made of the divine sermon on the mount. Blessed are they who possess, for they shall be consoled. End of Section 1 Section 2 of Brazilian Tales This liberal fox recording is in the public domain, recording by Lini. Brazilian Tales by various authors translated by Isaac Goldberg, Section 2. The fortune teller by Joaquin Maria Machado-Jasic. I am not observed to Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

1:23:32This was the self-same explanation that was given by beautiful Rita to her lover Camilo, on a certain Friday of November 1869, when Camilo left at her for having gone the previous evening to consult a fortune teller. The only difference is that she made her explanation in other words. Laugh, laugh, that's just like you, men. You don't believe in anything. Well, let me tell you. I went there, and she guessed the reason for my coming before I ever spoke a word. Scarcely had she begun to lay out the cards when she said to me, the lady likes a certain person. I confessed that it was so. And then she continued to rearrange the cards in various combinations, finally telling me that I was afraid you would forget me, but that there were no grounds for my fear. She was wrong, interrupted Camilo with the laugh. Don't say that Camilo. If you only realized in what anguish I went there, all on account of you,

1:24:35you know, I've told you before, don't laugh at me, don't poked fun at me. Camilo seized her hands and gazed into her eyes earnestly and long. He swore that he loved her ever so much, that her fears were childish. In any case, should she ever harbor a fear, the best fortune teller to consult was he himself. Then he reproved her, saying that it was imprudent to visit such houses. Vilela might learn of it, and then... Impossible. I was exceedingly careful when I entered the place. Where's the house? Near here, on Guadavale Street. Nobody was passing by at the time. Rest easy. I'm not a fool. Camilo left again. Do you really believe in such things? He asked. It was at this point that she translated Hamlet into everyday speech, assuring her lover that there was many a true, mysterious thing in this world. If he was skeptical, let him have patience.

1:25:37When thing, however, was certain, the card reader had guessed everything. What more could he desire? The best proof was that at this moment she was at ease and content. He was about to speak, but he restrained himself. He did not wish to destroy her illusions. He too, when a child, and even later, had been superstitious, filled with an arsenal of believes which his mother had instilled, and which had disappeared by the time he reached twenty. The day in which he rid himself of all this parasitic vegetation, leaving behind only the trunk of religion, he wrapped his superstition and his religion, which had both been inculcated by his mother in the same doubt, and soon arrived at a single, total negation. Camilo believed in nothing. Why? He could not have answered. He had not a solitary reason. He was content simply to deny everything. But I expressed myself ill, for to deny is, in a sense, to affirm, and he did not formulate his unbelief.

1:26:43Before the great mystery, he simply shrugged his shoulders and went on. The lover spotted in good spirits. He more happy than she. Rita was sure that she was loved, but Camilo was not only sure that she loved him, but saw how she trembled for him, and even took risks running to fortune tellers. However much he had reproved her for this, he could not help feeling flattered by it. Their secret meeting place was in the Old Barbonus street, at the home of a woman that came from Rita's province. Rita went off through Mangada's street, in the direction of Batafogo, where she resided. Camilo entered Guadalvelli's street, keeping his eye open as he passed, for the home of the card reader. Vilella, Camilo, and Rita. Three names, one adventure, and no explanation of how it all began. Let us proceed to explain. The first two were friends, since early as childhood. Vilella had entered the Magister Sea. Camilo found employment with the government, against the will of his father, who desired him to embrace the medical profession.

1:27:55But his father had died, and Camilo preferred to be nothing at all, until his mother had procured him a departmental position. At the beginning of the year 869, Vilella returned from the interior, where he had married a silly beauty. He abandoned the Magister Sea, and came hither to open a lawyer's office. Camilo had secured a house for him near Batafogo, and had welcomed him home. Is this the gentleman? Explain Rita, offering Camilo her hand. You can imagine how highly my husband thinks of you. He was always talking about you. Camilo and Vilella looked at each other tenderly. They were true friends. Afterwards, Camilo confessed to himself that Vilella's wife did not at all belly the enthusiastic letters her husband had written to him. Really, she was most prepossessing, lively in her movements, her eyes burning, her mouth plastic, and pickling the inquiring. Rita was a trifle older than both the men. She was 30, Vilella 29, and Camilo 26.

1:29:01The grave bearing of Vilella gave him the appearance of being much older than his wife, while Camilo was but a child in moral and practical life. He possessed neither experience nor intuition. The three became closely bound. Propagnity bred intimacy. Shortly afterwards, Camilo's mother died, and in this catastrophe, for such it was, the other two showed themselves to be genuine friends of his. Vilella took charge of the interment, of the church services, and the settlement of the affairs of the deceased. Rita dispensed consolation, and none could do it better. Just how this intimacy between Camilo and Rita grew to love, he never knew. The truth is that he enjoyed passing the hours at her side. She was his spiritual nurse, almost a sister, but most of all she was a woman and beautiful. The aroma of femininity, this is what he yearned for in her, and about her, seeking to incorporate it into himself.

1:30:05They read the same books, they went together to the theater, or for walks, he taught her cards and chess, and they played of knights. She badly, he, to make himself agreeable, but little less badly. Thus much, as far as external things are concerned. And now came personal intimacies, the timorous eyes of Rita, that so often sought his own, consulting them before they questioned those of her own husband, the touches of cold hands, and unwanted communion. On one of his birthdays, he received from Vilella a costly cane, and from Rita a hastily penciled, ordinary note, expressing good wishes. It was then that he learned to read within his own heart. He could not tear his eyes away from the misive. Come in place words, it is true, but there are sublime, commonplaces, or at least the lightful ones. The old shades in which, for the first time you rode with your beloved, snuggled together, is as good as the chariot of Apollo, such as men, and such are the circumstances that surround him.

1:31:11Camilo sincerely wished to flee the situation, but it was already beyond his power. Rita, like a serpent, was charming him, winding her coils about him. She was crushing his bones, darting her venomous fangs into his lips. He was helpless, overcome. Vexation, fear, remorse, desire, all this he felt in a strange confusion. But the battle was short, and the victory deliriously intoxicating, farewell all screpo. The shoe now fitted snugly enough upon the foot, and there they were, both, launched upon the high road, arm in arm, joyfully treading the grass in the gravel, without suffering anything more than lunch-someness, when they were away from each other. As to Vilella, his confidence and his wife, and his esteem for his friend, continued the same as before. One day, however, Camilo received an anonymous letter, which called him immoral and perfidious, and warned him that his adventure was known to all.

1:32:16Camilo took fright, and, in order to ward off suspicion, began to make his visits to Vilella's house more rare. The latter asked him the reason for his prolonged absence. Camilo answered that the cause was a youthful flirtation. Simplicity evolved into cunning. Camilo's absences became longer and longer, and then his visit seized entirely. Into this course, there may have entered a little self-respect, the idea of diminishing his obligations to the husband, in order to make his own actions appear less tracious. It was at this juncture that Rita, uncertain and in fear, ran to the fortune teller to consult her upon the real reason for Camilo's actions. As we have seen, the card reader restored the wife's confidence, and the young man reproved her for having done what she did. A few weeks passed. Camilo received two or three more anonymous letters, written with such passionate anger, that they could not have been prompted by mere regard for virtue.

1:33:19Surely they came from some violent rival of his. In this opinion, Rita concurred, formulating an ill-composed words of her own, this thought. Virtue is endolent and niggeredly, wasting neither time nor paper, only self-interest is alert and prodigal. But this did not help to ease Camilo. He now feared less the anonymous writer should inform Vilella, in which case the catastrophe would follow fast and implacably. Rita agreed that this was possible. Very well, she said, give me the envelopes in which the letter came, so that I may compare the handwriting with that of the male which comes to him. If any arrives with writing resembling the anonymous script, I'll keep it and tear it up. But no such letter appeared. A short time after this, however, Vilella commends to grow grave, speaking very little, as if something weighed upon his mind. Rita hurried to communicate the change to her lover, and they discussed the matter earnestly.

1:34:23Her opinion was that Camilo should renew his visits to their home, and sound her husband. It might be that Vilella would confide to him some business worry. With this Camilo disagreed. To appear after so many months was to confirm the suspicions and the nasiations of the anonymous letters. It was better to be very careful, to give each other up for several weeks. They arranged means for communicating with each other in case of necessity and separated and tears. On the following day, Camilo received that his department, this letter from Vilella, come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. It was past noon. Camilo left at once. As he reached the street, it occurred to him that it would have been much more natural for Vilella to have called him to his office, white to his house. All this be token the very urgent matter. Moreover, whether it was reality or illusion, it seemed to Camilo that the letter was written in a trembling hand.

1:35:28He sought to establish a connection between all these things, and the news Rida had brought him the night before. Come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. He repeated. His eyes staring at the note. In his mind's eye he beheld the climax of a drama. Rida cowed, weeping. Vilella indignant, seizing his pan and dashing off the letter, certain that he, Camilo, would answer in person and waiting to kill him as he was. Camilo shuddered with terror. Then his mild weekly. In any event the idea of drawing back was repugnant to him. So he continued on his way. As he walked, it occurred to him to step into his rooms. He might find there a message from Rida explaining everything. But he found nothing. Nobody. He returned to the street, and the thought that they had been discovered grew every moment more convincing. Yes, the author of the previous anonymous communications must have denounced him to the husband. Perhaps by now Vilella knew all.

1:36:36The very suspension of his skulls without any apparent reason with the flimsyest of pretexts would confirm everything else. Camilo walked hastily along, agitated, nervous. He did not read the letter again, but the words hovered persistently before his eyes. Or else, which was even worse, they seemed to be murmured into his ears by the voice of Vilella himself. Come immediately to our house. I must talk to you without delay. Spoken thus by the voice of the other, they seemed pregnant with mystery and menace. Come immediately. Why? It was now nearly one o'clock. Camilo's agitation walks greater with each passing moment. So clearly did he imagine what was about to take place that he began to believe it a reality, to see it before his very eyes. Yes, without a doubt, he was afraid. He even considered arming himself. Thinking that if nothing should happen, he would lose nothing by this useful precaution. But at once he rejected the idea angry with himself, and hastened his tap towards Karyaka Square, there to take artillery.

1:37:48He arrived, entered, and ordered the drive to be off at full speed. The sooner the better, he thought, I can't stand this uncertainty. But the very sound of the horse's clattering hooves increased his agitation. Time was flying, and he would be face-to-face with dangers soon enough. When they had come almost to the end of Guadavale street, the Tilbury had to come to a stop. The thoroughfare was blocked by a coach that had broken down. Camilo surveyed the obstruction and decided to wait. After five minutes had gone by, he noticed that there, at his left, at the very foot of the Tilbury, was the fortune teller's house. The very saying, as Rita had once consulted. Never as at this moment had he so desired to believe in card reading. He looked closer, so that the windows were closed, while all the others on the street were opened, filled with folks curious to see what was the matter. It looked for all the world like the dwelling of indifferent fate.

1:38:52Camilo leaned back in his seat, so as to shut all this from view. His excitement was intense, extraordinary, and from the deep, hidden recesses of his mind, there began to emerge spectres of early childhood, old beliefs banished superstitions. The coachman proposed another route, he shook his head and said that he would wait. He leaned forward to get a better look at the card reader's house. Then he made a gesture of self-ridicule. It had entered his mind to consult the fortune teller, who seemed to be hovering over him, far, far above, with vast, ash-collared wings. She disappeared, reappeared, and then her image was lost. Then, in a few moments, the ash-collared wings stirred again, nearer, flying about him in narrowing circles. In the street, men were shouting, dragging away the coach. There, now, push! That's it, now! In a short while, the obstruction was removed. Camilo closed his eyes, trying to think of other things, but the voice of Rita's husband whispered into his ears, the words of the letter, come immediately.

1:40:04And he could behold the anguish of the drama. He trembled. The house seemed to look right at him. His feet instinctively moved, as if to leave the carriage and go in. Camilo found himself preferra long, opaque veil. He thought rapidly of the inexplicability of so many things. The voice of his mother was repeating to him a host of extraordinary happenings, and the very sentence of the Prince of Denmark kept echoing within him. There are more things in heaven and earth, her ratio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. What could he lose by it, if... He jumped out to the pavement, just before the fortune teller's door. He told the driver to wait for him, and hastened into the entry ascending the stairs. There was little light. The stairs were worn away from the many feet that had sought them. The banister was smooth and sticky, but he saw and felt nothing. He stumbled up the stairs and knocked. Nobody appearing, he was about to go down, but it was too late now. Curiosity was whipping his blood, and his heartbeat with violent throbs. He turned back to the door and knocked once, twice, three times. He beheld a woman. It was the card reader.

1:41:20Camilo said that he had come to consult her, and she bade him and her. Then they climbed to the attic by a staircase even worse than the first, and buried in deeper gloom. At the top there was a garret, ill-lighted by a small window. Old furniture, summer walls, and a near-of-poverty augmented, rather than destroyed, the prestige of the occupant. The fortune-teller told him to be seated before the table, and she sat down on the opposite side, with her back to the window, so that whatever little light came from without fell full upon Camilo's face. She opened the drawer and took out a pack of worn, filthy cards. While she rapidly shuffled them, she peered at him closely, not so much with the direct gaze as from under her eyes. She was a woman of forty, Italian, thin and swarthy, with large, sharp, cunning eyes. She placed three cards upon the table, and sat. Let us first see what has brought you here. The gentleman has just received a severe shock, and is in great fear.

1:42:27Camilo astonished, nodded affirmatively. And he wishes to know, she continued, whether anything will happen to him or not. To me and to her, he explained excitedly. The fortune-teller did not smile. She simply told him to wait. She took the cards hastily once more, and shuffled them with her long tapering fingers, whose nails were so long and unclean from the neglect. She shuffled them well, once, twice, thrice. Then she began to lay them out. Camilo's eyes were riveted upon her in anxious curiosity. The cards tell me, Camilo leaned forward to drinking her words one by one. Then she told him to fear nothing. Nothing would happen to him or to the other. He, the third, was aware of not. Nevertheless, great caution was indispensable, envy and rivalry were at work. She spoke to him of the love that bound them of Rita's beauty.

1:43:31Camilo was bewildered. The fortune-teller stopped talking, gathered the cards and locked them in the drawer. The lady has restored peace to my spirit, he said, offering her his hand across the table and pressing that of the card reader. She arose laughing, go, she said, go ragatsu in namorato, and the rising she touched his head with her index finger. Camilo shuddered, as if it were the hand of one of the original cibbles, and he, too, arose. The fortune-teller went to the bureau, upon which lay a plate of raisins, took a cluster of them and commenced to eat them, showing two rows of teeth that were as white as her nails were black. Even in this common action the woman possessed in near all her own. Camilo, anxious to leave, was at a loss how much to pay. He did not know her fee. Raisins cost money, he said at length, taking out his pocketbook. How much do you want to send for?

1:44:32Ask your heart, she replied. Camilo took out a note for ten new haze and gave it to her. The eyes of the card reader sparkled. Her usual fee was two new haze. I can see easily that the gentleman loves his lady very much, and while he may, for she loves the gentleman very deeply. Go, going peace, with your mind at ease, and take care as you descend the staircase. It's dark. Don't forget your head. The fortune-teller had already placed the note in her pocket and accompanied him down the stairs, chatting rather galley. At the bottom of the first flight, Camilo bid her goodbye and ran down the stairs that led to the street, while the card reader rejoicing in her large fee turned back to the Garrett, humming a barcarole. Camilo found the Tilbury waiting for him. The street was now clear. He entered and the driver whipped his horse into a fast trot.

1:45:35To Camilo, everything had now changed for the better, and his affairs assumed a brighter aspect. The sky was clear, and the faces of the people he passed were all so merry. He even began to laugh at his fears, which he now saw were pure ill. He recalled the language of Vilella's letter, and perceived at once that it was most friendly and familiar. How in the world had he ever been able to read any threat of danger into those words? He suddenly realized that they were urgent, however, and that he had done ill to the lay so long. It might be some very serious business affair. Faster, faster, he cried to the driver. And he began to think of a plausible explanation of his delay. He even contemplated taking advantage of this incidence to re-establish his former intimacy in Vilella's household. Together with his friends, they're kept echoing in his soul the words of the fortune-teller. In truth, she had guessed the object of his visit, his own state of mind, and the existence of a third.

1:46:39Why then, wasn't it reasonable to suppose that she had guessed the rest correctly, too? For the unknown present is the same as the future. And thus, slowly and persistently, the young man's childhood superstitions attained the upper hand, and mystery clutched him in its iron claws. At times he was ready to burst into laughter, and with a certain vexation he did laugh at himself. But the woman, the cards, her dry reassuring words, and her goodbye, go, go, ragaz to enamorato. And finally, that farewell barker roll, so lively and gracious, such were the new elements which, together with the old, formed within him a new and abiding faith. The truth is that his heart was happy and impatient, recalling the happy hours of the past, and anticipating those yet to come. As he passed through Glorious Street, Camilo gazed across the sea, far across where the waters and the heaven meet, in endless embrace, and the sight gave him a sensation of the future, long, long and infinite.

1:47:49From here it was but a moment's drive to Vilella's home. He stepped out, thrust the iron garden gate open and entered. The house was silent. He ran up the six stone steps, and scarcely had he time to knock when the door opened, and Vilella loomed before him. Pardon my delay, it was impossible to come sooner. What is the matter? Vilella made no reply. His features were distorted. He back in Camilo to step within. As he entered, Camilo could not repress a cry of horror. There, upon the sofa lay Rida, dead in a pool of blood. Vilella seized the lover by the throat, and, with two bullets, stretched him dead upon the floor. End of Section 2 Section 3 of Brazilian Tales This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Lini, Brazilian Tales by various authors, translated by Isaac Goldberg, Section 3.

1:49:03Life by Joaquim Maria Machado-Jasiche End of Time Ahas Vires, seated upon a rock, gazes for a long while upon the horizon, a thwart which wang two eagles crossing each other in their path. He meditates, then falls into a dose, the day wanes. I have come to the end of time. This is the threshold of eternity. The earth is deserted. No other man breathes the air of life. I am the last. I can die. Die. Precious thought. For centuries of centuries I have lived, varied, mortified, wondering ever. But now the centuries are coming to an end, and I shall die with them.

1:50:05Ancient nature, farewell. A zirskye clouds ever reborn. Roses of a day and of every day. Perennial waters. Hostile earth that never would devour my bones. Farewell. The eternal wanderer will wander no longer. God may pardon me if he wishes, but death will console me. That mountain is as unyielding as my grief. Those eagles that fly under must be as famished as my despair. Shall you to die, divine eagles? Of a surety the race of men is perished. The earth is bare of them. I hear a voice. The voice of a human being. Implacable heavens. Am I not then the last? He approaches. Who are you? They're shined in your large eye, something like the mysterious light of the archangels of Israel. You are not a human being?

1:51:15No. Of a race divine then? You have said it. I do not know you, but what matters is that I do not. You are not a human being. Then I may die. For I am the last, and I close the gate of life. Life, like ancient thieves, has a hundred gates. You close one, and others will open. You are the last of your species. Then another better species will come. Made not of clay, but of the light itself. Yes, last of men. All the common spirits will perish forever. The flower of them it is, which will return to earth and rule. The ages will be rectified. Evil will end. The winds will vence forth scatter, neither the germs of death, nor the clamor of the oppressed,

1:52:22but only the song of love everlasting, and the benediction of universal justice. What can all this pastime's joy matter to the species that dies with me? Believe me, you who are immortal, to the bones that rot in the earth, the purples of Sedonia are worthless. What you tell me is even better than what Campanella dreamed. In that men's ideal city there were delights and ills. Yours excludes all mortal and physical ailments. May the Lord hear you, but let me go and die. Go, go, but why this haste end your days? The haste of a man who has lived for thousands of years. Yes, thousands of years. Men who existed scarcely, scores at them, invented a feeling of enwy, tedium weithy, which they could never know, at least in all its implacable and vast reality,

1:53:30because it is necessary to have journeyed through all the generations and all the cataclysm to feel the profound surfaith of existence. Thousands of years. My name is Ahas Vires, I dwelt in Jerusalem at the time they were about to crucify Christ. When he passed my door, he weakened under the burden of the beam that he carried on his shoulders, and I thrust him onward, admonishing him not to stop, not to rest, to continue on his way to the hill where he was to be crucified. Then there came a voice from heaven telling me that I too should have to journey forever continuously until the end of time. Such was my crime. I felt no pity for him who was going to his death. I do not know myself how it came about. The Pharisee said that the son of Mary had come to destroy the law, and that he must be slain,

1:54:38I ignorant wretch, wish to display my zeal, and hence my action not that day, how many times have I seen the same thing since travelling unceasingly through cities and ages. Whenever a zealotry penetrated into a submissive soul, it became cruel or ridiculous. My crime was unpartenable. A grave crime in truth, but the punishment was lenient. The other man read but a chapter of life. You have read the whole book. What does one chapter know of the other chapter? Nothing. But he who has read them all, connects them and concludes. Are there melancholy pages? There are Mary and happy ones too. Tragedy convulsion proceeds that of laughter, life burgeons from death, swans and swallows change climate, without ever abandoning it entirely.

1:55:46And thus, all is harmonized and begun anew. You have beheld us, not ten times, not a thousand times, but ever. You have beheld the magnificence of the earth, curing the affliction of the soul, and the joy of the soul compensating for the desolation of things. The alternating bence of nature, who gives her left hand to job and her right to start an appalice. What do you know of my life? Nothing. You are ignorant of human existence. I, ignorant of human life, how lefable. Come perpetual man, explain yourself. Tell me everything. You left Jerusalem. I left Jerusalem. I began my wandering through the ages. I journeyed everywhere, whatever deraise, the creed, the tongue, sons and snows, marbours and civilized peoples, islands, continents, wherever a man breathed, their breathed I.

1:57:01I never labored. Labor is a refuge, and that refuge was denied me. Every morning I found upon me the necessary money for the day, see, this is the last portion, man. Go, for I need you no longer. He draws forth the money and throws it away. I did not work. I just journeyed, ever and ever, one day after another, year after year, unendingly, century after century. Eternal justice knew what it was doing. It added idleness to eternity. One generation bequeathed me to the other. The languages, as they died, preserved my name like a fossil. With the passing of time, all was forgotten. The heroes faded into myths, into shadow, and history crumbled to fragments, only two or three vague, remote characteristics remaining to it. And I saw them in changing aspect. You spoke of a chapter? Happy are those who read only one chapter of life. I just wanted to say that I was the only person who could be the only person who could be the only person who could have the most understanding of the world.

1:58:06And I saw them in changing aspect. You spoke of a chapter? Happy are those who read only one chapter of life. Those who depart at the birth of empires bear with them the impression of their perpetuity. Those who die at their fall are buried in the hope of their restoration. But do you not realize what it is to see the same things unceasingly, the same alternation of prosperity and desolation, desolation and prosperity, eternal obsequies and eternal hallelujahs, dawn upon dawn, sunset upon sunset? But you did not suffer, I believe. It is something not to suffer. Yes, but I saw other men suffer, and in the end the spectacle of joy gave me the same sensations as the discourses of an idiot. Fatalities of flesh and blood, an ending strife, I saw all past before my eyes, until night caused me to lose my taste for day, and now I cannot distinguish flowers from fistles.

1:59:19Everything is confused in my weary red now, but nothing pained you personally, and what about me from time immemorial, suffering the wrath of the gods? You, my name, is Prometheus. You, Prometheus! And what was my crime? Out of clay and water, I made the first men, and afterwards seized with compassion, I stole for them fire from the sky, such was my crime. Jupiter, who then reign over Olympus, condemned me to the most cruel of tortures. Come, climb this rock with me. You are telling me a tale, I know that Hellenic myth, incredulous old fellow, come see the very chains that fattered me.

2:00:20It was an excessive penalty for no crime, whatever, but divine pride is terrible. See, there they are. And time, which naws all things, does not desire them then? They were brought by a divine hand, vulcan forged them. Two emissaries from heaven came to secure me to the rock, and an eagle, like that which now is flying across the horizon, kept no in at my liver, without ever consuming it. This lasted for time beyond my reckoning. No, no, you cannot imagine this torture. Are you not deceiving me? You, Prometheus, was that not then a figment of the ancient imagination? Look well at me, touch these hands, see whether I really exist.

2:01:27Then Moses lied to me, you are Prometheus, creator of the first men? That was my crime. Yes, it was your crime, an artifice of hell, your crime was inexpeable. You should have remained forever bound and devoured. You, the origin of the ill that afflict me, I lacked compassion, it is true, but you, who gave me life, perverse divinity, were the cause of all. Approaching death confuses your reason. Yes, it is you. You have the Olympic forehead, strong and beautiful Titan. It is you indeed. Are these your chains? I see upon them no trace of your tears. I wept them for your humankind. And humanity wept far more because of your crime. Hear me, last of men, last of vigngrades.

2:02:34What need have I of your words? I desire your groans perverse divinity. Here are the chains. See how I raise them. Listen to the clank of the iron. Who embeooned you just now? Hercules. Hercules. See whether he will repeat his service now that you are to be bound anew. You are raving. The sky gave you your first punishment. Now earth will give you the second and the last. Not even hercules will ever be able to break these fadders. See how I brandage them in the air like fadders. For I represent the power of millennial despair. All humanity is concentrated within me. Before I sink into the abyss, I will ride upon the stone the epitaph of a world. I will summon the eagle and it will come. I will tell it that the last men on the parting from life leaves him a god as a gift.

2:03:38Poor ignorant wretch who rejects a throne. No, you cannot reject it. Now it is you who are raving. Niel, and let me menicle your arms. So, as well you will resist no more. Bend his way. Now your legs. Have done. Have done. It is the passions of earth turning upon me. But I who am not a human being to not know ingratitude. You will not be spared a jot of your destiny. It will be fulfilled to the letter. You yourself will be the new Hercules. I who announced the glory of the other now proclaim yours. And you will be no less generous than he. Are you mad? The truth unknown to man is the madness of him who proclaims it. Proceed and have done. Glory pays nothing and dies. This glory will never die.

2:04:45Have done. Have done. Show the sharp beak of the eagle where it is to devour my entrails. But hear me. No, hear nothing. You cannot understand me. Speak, speak. The ephemeral world cannot understand the world eternal. But you will be the link between the two. Tell me everything. I speak nothing. Fatter this wrist swell that I shall not flee so that I shall be here on your return. Tell you all I have already told you that a new race shall people the earth formed of the chosen spirits of the extinct humanity. The multitude of others will perish. A noble family, all seen and powerful, will be the perfect synthesis of the divine and the human. The times will be others, but between them and these a link is necessary. And you shall be that link.

2:05:51I, you yourself, you, the chosen one, you, the king. Yes, it has veerous. You shall be king. The wanderer will find rest. The despised of men shall rule over mankind. Wily Titan, you are deceiving me. King, I, you, king, who else then, the new world needs to be bound by a tradition and none can speak of one to the other as you can. Thus there will be no gap between the two humanities. The perfect will proceed from the imperfect and your lips will tell the new world its origin. You will relate to the new humanity, all the ancient good and evil. And thus will you live a new, like the tree whose dead branches are lopped off, only the flourishing ones being preserved, but here growth will be eternal.

2:06:59Resplendent vision, I myself, you are very self. These eyes, these hands, a new and better life, glorious vision. Titan, it is just, just was the punishment, but equally just is the glorious remission of my sin. Shall I live, I myself, a new and better life. No, you are gesting with me. Very well then, leave me. You will return someday when this vast heaven will be open to let the spirits of the new life descend. You will find me here at peace. Go. Shall I again greet the sun? The self-same sun that is about just said. Friend, sun, eye of time, never more shall your eyelids close, gaze upon it if you can.

2:08:03I cannot, you will be able to, when the conditions of life shall have changed. Then your red now will gaze upon the sun without peril. For in the man of the future will be concentrated all that is best in nature, energizing or subtle, centellating or pure. Swear that you are not lying, you will see whether I lie. Speak, speak on, tell me everything. The description of life is not worth the sensation of life. Your shall experience it deeply. The bosom of Abraham in your old scriptures is nothing but this final, perfect world. There you will greet David and the prophets. There we will tell to the astounded listeners not only the great events of the extinct world, but also the ills they will never know.

2:09:06The vastness, old age, grief, egotism, hypocrisy, abhorrent vanity, imbacility and the rest, the soul like the earth will possess an incorruptible tunic. I shall gaze ever on the immense blue sky. Behold how beautiful it is. As beautiful when serene as eternal justice, magnificent heaven, more beautiful than the tens of Caesar. I shall behold you forever. You will receive my thoughts as before. You will grant me clear days and friendly nights. Dawn upon dawn. Ah, speak on, speak on, tell me everything. Let me unbind these chains. Losing them, new Hercules, last man of the old world, who shall be the first of the new, such as your destiny, neither you nor I, nobody can alter it. You go farther than your Moses.

2:10:12From the top of Mount Nibbou, at the point of death, he beheld the land of Jericho, which was to belong to his descendants, and the Lord sat unto him. Thou hast seen with thine eyes, yet shall not pass beyond. You shall pass beyond, as has Vyrus. You shall dwell in Jericho. Place your hand upon my head. Look well at me. Fill me with the reality of your prediction. Let me breathe a little of the new, full life. King, did you say? The chosen king of a chosen people. It is not too much in recompense for the deep ignominy in which I have dwelled. Where one life hipped myer, another life will place a halo. Speak on, speak on, speak on. He continues to dream. The two eagles draw near.

2:11:17Hey, hey, hey, I've asked for this last man. He's dying, yet he dreams of life. Not so much that he hated it, as that he loved it so much. End of Section 3 Section 4 of Brazilian Tales Section 4 of Brazilian Tales This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Lini. Brazilian Tales by various authors translated by Isaac Colberg, Section 4. The Vengeance of Félix by José de Medeiros e Obuquerque, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Old Félix had followed his trade of digger in all the queries that Huyge Jean-Huyge possessed. He was a sort of Hercules with huge limbs, but otherwise stupid as a post.

2:12:18His companions had nicknamed him Hardhead because of his obstinate character. Once an idea had penetrated his school, it would stick there like a gimlet and the devil himself couldn't pull it out. Because of this trade, there arose quarrels, altercations on points of the smallest significance, which the main acquaintances would purposely bring up, knowing his evil humor. But Félix, despite his vigorous and sanguine constitution, was by no means quick to anger, nor immediately responsive to injury. On the contrary, he was exceedingly patient in his vindictiveness. For the longest time he would ruminate upon his vengeance, most astutely, and he would carry it out at the moment when he believed himself perfectly secure. Oh, his ruses were not of very great finesse and required very little talent. But by dint of considering and reconsidering the case, by dint of waiting patiently for the propitious opportunity to present itself,

2:13:23he finally would play some evil trick upon his comrades, so that nobody liked him. Félix had married, but his wife did not long survive. Just long enough to leave him a son and a daughter, who grew up knowing little restraint, chomping around with all the good for nothings of the vicinity, plaguing all the neighbors, who on their part, were not slow to punish the rascals. Thus, several years went by. The son became a notorious character, the daughter, an impudent, cynical little runabout, who, on certain occasions, would fill their rickety abode with her chatter about affairs concerning the man of so-and-so worse such and such. And thus, things were going when the old man took it into his head to fall ill. An excruciating rheumatism attacked both his legs, rendering him incapable of moving about, and confining him to an old, lame armchair that was balanced by a complicated arrangement of old boxes that could never be got to remain steady.

2:14:30The illness became chronic. The daughter helped out the finances of the house with her earnings as laundry woman, and perhaps by earnings of a different nature. Anyway, they got along. The old fellow, willenily, spent his days invariably riveted to his armchair, groaning with pain at the least movement, swearing, fratting and fuming, the spearing of life. And, since his daughter simply refused from the very beginning to let him have even a drop of brandy, he was perforced cured of his vice. Just about this time, there happened to them the worst of all possible adventures. The son, whom the father had not seen for several weeks, one fine day attacked a peaceful citizen, and, with a terrible knife thrust in the stomach, dispatched him to a better world, as to which event circumstances seemed so contrary that the son allowed himself to be arrested.

2:15:31The old man was in the habit of reading his gazette religiously from the first line to the last, thus he learned the news. And it was through the same newspaper that he followed the trial and learned of his son's conviction. This made him furious, not so much because of the sentence, as because of a special circumstance. The polisman who had arrested his son was just think of it. Bernardo. Yes, Bernardo, his own neighbor, the same chap who would greet him daily with the ironic words, how are things, fellow ex-old boy, and when will you be ready for your waltz? Even on the day of imprisonment, and during those that followed, Bernardo had permitted himself these witty remarks. Bernardo was a cabre of Bahia, a pretentious mulado, whose enormous head of hair, carefully parted in the middle into two flourishing masses, was kept so only through the services of otheros pomade that cost four suits a pot.

2:16:35He had been, in his day, a dishonest political henchman, well known for his exploits. Then, supported by the liberal leader whose election he had worked for, he escaped prison and entered the police service. At that time, police officers were called bats, a sober cat that troubled Bernardo very little. And it had been he, what anger flashed in old phallix's eyes as he thought of it, he, whose past activities would well bear examination, he, who had arrested phallix's son. From that moment, one preoccupation alone filled phallix's hours, vengeance. This hatred dominated his existence, and became the only power that could vanquish the ever-growing misery of his broken-down body. The mere thought that he could not grow well, while the cabre would daily continue to live, an insolent impunity was enough to give him convulsions of rage, he would foal at the mouth, gnash his teeth, and, in that obtuse brain of his, concoct scheme upon scheme of vengeance, almost all of them, impracticable, for he was changed to the spot in stupid impotence.

2:17:52At times, he would wish to call Bernardo, and with thunderous violence, poor torrents of insult upon his head, but what end would that serve? Phallix's treacherous, cowardice nature, counselled him to have prudence. So, on the first days after the arrest, when the mulada would go by, the old man feigned slumber. Then, in the continuing uncertainty, as to what method of vengeance to pursue, and in order not to let his hatred betray itself, he spoke to the policeman as if nothing had happened. Nevertheless, there was one thing that puzzled him greatly. His daughter had said nothing to him about the entire affair. Did she know nothing about it? It was almost impossible that the mulado, with his chatterbox habits, had not spoken of the matter. Had his daughter feared to shock him with the news? This was all the less probable, since she had never had any particular love for him.

2:18:53Scarcely did a day pass that she did not call him a good for nothing, a lazy loud, and other similar tendernesses. So, he breathed not a word, and continued to ruminate upon his vengeance. Months rolled on, far from getting better, the illness increased. As soon as the old fellow tried to move, horrible pain seized him at every joint. His daughter maltreated him, and at the height of his attacks, she would reply to his complaints that he'd do better if he left the house, and she even threatened to send him to the hospital. It was now June. The weather was one long succession of heavy rains. The invulids suffered atrociously from the cold and the damp, and his daughter, disgruntled at the bad weather, which interfered with her washing, lived in unbroken soakiness. She treated him worse than a dog, and it was truly with the patience of a dog that he endured everything, so much that he feared being sent away.

2:19:55A plan of vengeance had arisen in his brain, and slowly, during the months, ever since he had learned that his case was incurable, his project had absorbed his entire mental activity, indeed his whole existence. He breathed only for his plan, for the sure, propitious opportunity. At last, it came, and a terrible day it was. At dusk, his daughter had left, closing the door as was her habit, and had not returned at night. The old man was parched with thirst, and his physical torture had doubled. He resolved upon quick action. In the morning, it might have been about seven o'clock, his daughter returned, or rather rolled into the room, and with her, pale malcane Jane, Vernade's friend. Jane was roundly berating his daughter, ''You rotten thing!'' she cried. ''I'll show you, trying to take away somebody else's men!''

2:20:57And the two women came to blows, rousing the entire neighborhood. They tried at last to separate the combatants, but it would have been easier to break them to bits, so fiercely that they struggle against each other. There was a whistle, the police arrived, and the women were taken to the lock-up. All this as squicked as a flesh. The old man had not had time to utter a word, but an extreme rage, blind, and anger, such as only savage beasts can know, overpowered him. What? His daughter, the mistress of Bernardo? This was the last straw. Torch-Nun, the mulado, came back. He had spent the night away from home, under the pretext of a special patrol. He returned, ignorant of the morning's events. He came in smiling, in that measured walk of his, waddling along. He approached Felix and asked him the classic question, ''Now then, how goes it?''

2:21:59Felix did not reply, and merely made a sign with his hand. The police man entered. When he had come near, Felix said to him, in a low voice, that he had something very serious to tell him. But first of all, he insisted that Bernardo go and bring his large knife. Why, that, Felix? What do you want to do with a knife?' asked the other. ''The old man smiled mysteriously. Quick, my boy. I'll tell you afterwards, and you'll see that my story will be worth the trouble.'' ''All right, I'll get it,' reply the officer. And a minute later he was back with the knife, which he gave to the invalid. Now, continue the letter. Go and close the door, so that nobody will hear. Close it well, and turn the key.'' Bernardo felt some mistrust at all this mystery, but knowing for certain that the helpless old man could do him no harm, he obeyed, curiously waiting to learn what the other was up to.

2:23:04''So, you want to tell me now?'' Not yet. Here, first put this watch in your pocket. And the old man drew from his pocket an ancient nickel watch, which he gave to the cabrera. ''What am I to do with this, Felix?'' asked the mulado. ''Keep it, I tell you. What's the reply?'' ''The old Duffer is crazy for sure.'' Fapirnardo, nevertheless doing as he was told. Then, seeing in what manner the invalid had grasped the knife, he discreetly withdrew a few paces. ''Well, almost immediately Felix made a sudden movement that caused his pain to increase a new, and he began to groan, to utter most terrible cries, almost streaks. ''I'm dying, I'm dying.'' Bernardo had never heard such awful groaning, his mistrust grew, and seeing that the old man still clutched the knife, he thought the invalid would kill him. If he should attempt to approach, he therefore, again stepped back a few paces, in a way to developments, persuaded that he had a lunatic in front of him.

2:24:09''The groaning became louder and louder, so that it was easily to be heard outside.'' ''Finally, the cabrera, tired of waiting, said, I'll be back right away, Felix, and he was about to leave.'' Grewsley, the old man uncovered his own breast, and with a rapid movement, right over the heart, he thrust in the blade with all his might up to the hilt. Not a drop of blood spurted out, the thick blade obstructing the wound, his face convulsed with an expression of excruciating torment, his hanging arms grew rigid. The officer rushed to the door, opened it, called for help, and returned to pull the knife from the wound, and to see whether it was yet possible to save the unfortunate man. Men and women, wildly excited, ran up to the house crying loudly, and seeing this man, with a long knife, once the blood was dripping, seeing also the pierced breast of old Felix, the whole populist rushed upon Bernardo, disarmed him, crying, ''Gil him! Gil him! Gil him!''

2:25:16Bernardo was punched and kicked and cuddled from one infuriated person to the other in the crowd, and led to the police station by a multitude which every moment walks greater and more threatening. Several months later, the trial came to an end. Bernardo was sentenced to hard labor for life. Nobody would believe his story. The proofs were overwhelming. Had he not been caught red-handed? The presence of the nickel-watch in his pocket indicated sufficiently that the motive of the crime was robbery. The vengeance of old Felix had been well calculated, the result was there, the old man had conquered. And in the section 4. Section 5 of Brazilian Tales. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Lenny.

2:26:17Brazilian Tales by various authors, translated by Isaac Goldberg, section 5. The Pigeons by Gueroenépto, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, when the Pigeons leave, misfortune follows, Indian superstition. When Juana appeared at the door, yawning, fatigued after the long sleepless night, spent at her son's bedside, Chibusiu on the terrace, leaning against his spade, was watching the Pigeon house closely. The sun was already setting, and gilded the moist leaves. At the edge of the ravine, turtle-dose and starlings were circling in the air, making a joyous noise above the high branches of the neighboring trees. The Caboclo Indian did not remove his eye from the Pigeon house. Footnote. Caboclo signifies Capher-colored. Indigenous tribes of Brazil are so called from the color of their skin.

2:27:21The wrinkles on his forehead bore witness to an inner struggle, grey thoughts which were clouding his spirit. A Pigeon took to flight, then another, and still another. He turned his head, following them with his gaze until they were out of sight, and then returned to his melancholy contemplation. The birds came and went, entered the Pigeon house, and left, in agitated manner, cooling loudly. They circled above the dwelling, sought the trees, a light head on the patch of the cabin, descended to earth in spiral flight. Some seemed to be getting their bearings to seek a route. They gazed across the clear stretches of space, and penetrated to the distant horizons. Others would fly off, describing vast circles, and would return to the Pigeon house. Then, all would come together, as if for a discussion to plan their departure.

2:28:23Some, undecided, opened their wings as if about to fly away, but soon would close them again. Still others would dart off, only to come back anglously, and the noise increased to a hubbub of hurried leaving. The Indian gazed fixably, while he knew that the life of his little son was at stake, and depended upon the decision of the birds, when the Pigeons leave must fortune quickly follows. Joanna noticed his preoccupation. What is the matter, she asked? The cabochus scratched his head, and made no reply. The woman insisted. What is the trouble, she boughs you? The Pigeons have taken a whim into their head, Joanna, and you are lost in the contemplation of it. I have not cared to speak, but I know well the meaning of what I see. The cabochus lunged the spade across his shoulder, and walked slowly, up the road that led to the plantation, through the wet hay which exailed the Pigeon order.

2:29:30Some hands were clucking, hidden in the high grass, and a little ribbon of water, which flow gently along, sparkled here and there through the openings in the brushwood. Chibusu had bowed, spade on his shoulder, could not shake off the deep impression that had been made upon him by the sudden migration of the birds. It was the fatal sign. To be sure, he had heard the owl screech for many and many a night, but he had seen no cause for fear in this. Everything was going along nicely. Their little son was in good health, and they too knew no illness. But now the warning of the evil omen was confirmed. The Pigeons which he had himself brought up were flying away. They were leaving, thus forecasting the arrival of death. He turned back, he raised his eyes. They were the birds high above, still circling about, and Joanna was at the threshold of the cabin, leaning against the jam, her arms crossed, her head hanging.

2:30:34The poor woman was surely weeping. Within him he fell the mute explosion of hatred and revolt against the ungrateful birds. Never had he had the courage to kill a single one of them. He lived only for the purpose of keeping the pigeon-house in order, thinking only of making it larger, so that it might accommodate more pairs. And the little child was it not he who crushed a millet for the flagelings, who climbed the mango tree, going from branch to branch, to see whether there wasn't some crack through which the rain came in. Who knows? Perhaps the pigeons were leaving their dwelling, because they no longer saw him? He shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way. As he crossed the dam, his heart palpitated wildly. He stopped. The water held back in its course, through back emotionless reflection of him. But although he looked down upon it, he saw not his image. His thoughts were entirely with the little child, who, burning with fever, was in the lyrium.

2:31:40He chose a side path. The millet stems were so high that he disappeared within them with a crumpling of dry leaves. The soft and hills which it was his daily custom to level off, failed to attract his attention. He walked straight on, parrots flew by, chattering, with their green wings shining in the sun, and huge grasshoppers were jumping in the leaves. He came upon a straw-hut. Here the child was one to play with its toys. There was even now a boot of wild sugarcane. But already the grass was beginning to invade the abandoned shelter. For a month the little child had not visited the place. When the father came to the field of Maniok, he sat down, bent almost in two. The spade weighed upon his shoulders like a burden. The strength had oozed out of his legs. His whole body was broken with fatigue, as if at the end of a long journey. He sat down upon a hillock and began to trace lines upon the earth, with a distraught air.

2:32:44At times it seemed as if he had heard the echo of his wife's voice. He would raise his head and strain his ears to catch the sound. But only the rustling of the leaves stirred by the breeze and the chirping of the insects in the sun came to him. All earth seemed to perspire. A deaphonous vapor rose tremblingly from the hot soil. The leaves hung languidly, and through the intense blueness of the sky passed some urubus in search of distant lodgings. Footnote, Urubu, the black vulture of South America, and the footnote. Suddenly, a pigeon went through the air, then another, and still another, they were leaving. They were leaving. A beating of wings, more on the way, they would never return, never. They were fleeing in horror, feeling the approach of death. For a long time he gazed about him, but could see only the rich vulture waving to the wind in the warm transparency of the atmosphere. He should have taken his child to town as soon as the illness had appeared. But who could have foretold this?

2:33:54He raised his eyes to heaven, and they lingered upon the limineus's zura, then came another pigeon. He shook his head, and striking his fist against his thigh, slung his spade back upon his shoulder, and turned in the direction of his house. When she won a saw him on the terrace, she appeared to divine his thoughts. It is well you return my dear, all along here I am at a loss as to what to do. He looked at the pigeon house, saw that it was deserted, and ominously silent. As evening fell, Chibus who sat down upon the threshold of the cabin, and began to smoke, waiting for the pigeons. The grasshoppers were strilling, all the birds who had their nests in the tree nearby retired, and, as it was still light, they lingered in the branches to trill their goodnight cadences. The sky grew pale, the landscape was veiled in a light mist, the evening breeze scattered the gentle odor of relays, not very far off, the dog bark now and then.

2:34:59At times, the grave-loving sat in the silence. Chibus who did not remove his eyes from the pigeon house, unless it was the pierced shadows and tried to discover in the distance one of the birds. Perhaps some of them would return. Where could they find a better shelter? The forest was full of dangers, and domestic pigeons could scarcely live in the brushwood. What other pigeon-roost could have attracted them? If he had but followed the line of their flight, some had taken the direction of the fields, others had flown towards the mountains, and there was no sign of any returning. It was now quite dark. Zhuan alighted a candle, already the frogs were croaking in the marshes. A star shone in the sky. Chibus who fixed his gaze upon it, and began to pray in low tones. The silence was scarcely broken by the murmuring of the water as it ran, and broke over the stones in the ravine not far away, just behind the cabin.

2:36:04Chibus decide, arose, leaned against the jam and lacked courage to go inside. Zhuan alighted near the door. And now, the same thing he replied. He stepped down, called her, and together they went towards the terrace. Near the mango tree, directly under the pigeon house they stopped, and the Indian, as if in fear of being heard by the child, asked softly. Zhuan alighted, and he pointed to the deserted pigeon-roost. Only Lina knows, she answered. She can pronounce the proper spells. So they say, Chibus stood as if in a dream, suddenly in a firm voice he announced, I am going to her. Now, certainly, having to just said that she was a sorceress, I have never seen it Chibus. That's what people say.

2:37:08But you? I? No. And I am afraid that it is too late. You have seen yourself how far gone he is. He's no longer interested in anything. I move about, I speak. I go here and there, I come back again into the room. But it is all nothing to him. Ah, God in heaven. Her voice died out, suddenly she melted into tears. Chibus who withdrew when commenced to pay slowly up and down the terrace. The white moon was rising. The fields became less obscure, and in the light the shadows of the trees very black stretched across the ground. Patients, dear woman, patience. This trident crickets were chirping. The Kabokla murmured. Yes, I know. Of a sudden Joanna shuddered, quivering she turned towards the cabin, from whose wide door shone a ray of vivid light, for a moment her astonished gaze lingered, and then, with a bound, she was gone.

2:38:16Chibus, motionless, without understanding what his wife had just done, quietly awaited her return, when the piercing cry rang out. The Kabokla rushed to the cabin and made for the room where the candle was burning. The woman on her knees, before the little bed, leaning over the child, was sobbing deserately. What has happened Joanna? She gave a horse cry in through her arms across the corpse of her son. Look, it's all over! She bent down, her face brushed the cheek that was burning, her trembling hands felt a little body that was still a flame. She touched the sunken chest, where the ribs showed through, like laughs, and the hollow abdomen. Listen to his heart Chibusya. He could only reply, it is all over. The mother arose with a leap, this figure, her hair does heveled, her eyes sparkling. She tried to speak, stretch her hands out to her husband, but fell limp upon a basket, and bowed down, bathed in tears, she began to repeat the name of her son, with an infinite tenderness that was rent by sobs.

2:39:28My leash, my little leash, but a moment that go living, oh blessed version! Chibusya turned away and in the room, before the table, his stopped, his eyes wondering, his lips trembling, the tears rolling in big drops down his bony face. Chibusya left the chamber, wavering as if drunk, and seeing him through herself into his arms. He held her without uttering a word, and they stood thus in embrace for a long time in the dark, narrow room, where the crickets were chirping. Chibusya went back to the chamber, Chibusya remained leaning against the table, his eyes fixed upon the candle which flickered in the breeze. Slowly the light of the moon came in, white climbing upon the walls. He arose with a sigh, went to the door, set down upon the threshold, lighted his pipe, and looked leisurely out upon the country which was growing brighter beneath the moon.

2:40:34Suddenly it seemed to him that he heard the cooling of pigeons. Above the stars were shining, the tree tops glittered in the moonlight. Could it be an illusion? Motionless, he concentrated his attention. The cooling continued. He arose impaturously, walked straight to the pigeon-roost, and leaned against the trunk of the mango tree. Could it be the pigeons who were returning after the passing of death? He began to muttering fury, replying to his thoughts, and how it's too late to curse upon them. A beating of wings, a tender cooling, and little cries came from the pigeon-house. There was no doubt now. He went forward, and from the middle of the terrace watched the pigeon-house, walking resolutely towards the cabin. Joanna was sobbing, hopelessly. He took the candle, went to the kitchen, and seeing the axe in a corner, he seized it, still muttering. He then turned back to the terrace, and, having reached the mango tree, rolled up the sleeves of his coarse shirt so that he might swing the axe.

2:41:44At the first blow against the post which supported the pigeon-house, the birds grew still. Chibursu redoubled his efforts, a crack now weakened the structure, but still it resisted. He leaned the axe against the trunk, and grasping the branches raised himself to the top of the tree. From there he supported himself between two boughs, and gave the large box a furious kick. The pigeon-roost fell, shattered to the ground. Two pigeons flew off in great fright, dazed. Uncertain of their direction in the clearness of the night, they lit upon the roof of the hut. The cabochus lit down lightly along the trunk, and saw two little bodies who were whining, staggering, dragging themselves along. They were two little pigeons. He bent over them, took them in his hands, and began to examine them. They were ugly, still without wings, having only thinned down to cover the muscles of their soft, wrinkled bodies. The Indian turned them over, this way and that, in his shriveled hands. He felt their fragile bones, and the little things struggled to fly away, moving the stumps of their wings. They stretched out their necks and wind.

2:43:02Nashing his teeth, she boosted to squeeze the flatlings and crushed them. Their tender bones cracked like bits of wood, the blood gushed forth and trickled, warm, through the tightened fingers of the man. Under the impulse of his fury he threw them to the ground. They flattened out, soft as rotten fruit, and the cabochus growling to himself, shriveled upon them. The parent birds were cooling, dolariously, upon the fetched roof, flying hither and thither. Joanna, embracing her dead child, was still sobbing, when she boosted to enter the chamber. He stopped before the little bed and looked down. Of a sudden the woman shook, arose with a star, ceded her husband's arm, her eyes distended, and her mouth wide open, her head bending over as if to hear voices far away sounds. What is Zit Joanna, what is the matter with you?

2:44:02In terror she stemmed reply, the pigeons dear husband, don't you hear them? It was their sad queen that came from the roof of the house. They are returning, who knows, he's yet warm, she cried, and in the heart of the woman arose a great hole. She boosts who shrugged his shoulders. Now it's their turn to mourn, he answered. They are sobbing, like us. It's a pair that remained behind, because of the little ones. I dashed the pigeon house to earth, I have killed the fledgling sea, and he showed his bloody hands. They flew away, they're on the house, do you want to see? He went out, she followed. They walked to the terrace, to boost her pointed to the ruined pigeon house. Then he grasped the crushed bodies of the little birds. Look, without breathing a word, Zit Joanna looked on. In her hoarder she had stopped weeping.

2:45:02She gazed upon her husband, whose burning eyes flashed fire. He threw the first little pigeon upon the roof, bellowing. Tis well, he threw the second. Tis well, he repeated. The pigeons frightened, flew off in the dark foliage. Tis well, he said once more. Joanna, dumb, terrified, could not remove her eyes from her husband, who was now crying with sobbs, his open hands stained with blood. Come, dear husband, it was the will of God, our little son is in heaven, and slowly she hardened him. They entered their cabin, and before the pallet of the dead child, the tears gushed from their eyes, while on the roof above, the pigeons who had returned, recooling, dollarously. End of Section 5

2:46:06Section 6 of Brazilian Tales. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Lini. Brazilian Tales by various authors, translated by Isaac Goldberg, Section 6. Ends as S. Tears by Carming the Lodish. Pale and thin, for 18 years she had lived with her youngest sister, who had married very early, and now possessed five children, two young ladies of marriageable age, a third still in short dresses, and two little boys. Maria José, whose nickname was Zé Zé, had never been beautiful or winning. Upon her father's death, it was thought best that she should go to live with her sister and Rascina's family. Here, she led a monotonous existence, helping to bring up her nephews and nieces, who were born in that young and happy household, with a regularity that grouped small intervals between the births.

2:47:07Along, pointed nose disfigured her face, and her lips, extremely thin, looked like a pale crack. Her thoughtful gaze alone possessed a certain melancholy attractiveness. But even here, her eyes protruding too far for the harmony of the lines upon her face, seemed always to be red, and her brows narrow and sparse. Of late, an intricate network of wrinkles as fine as hairs had formed at the corner of her eyes. From her nose, likewise, to furrows, ran along the transparent delicacy of her skin, and reached either side of her mouth. When she smiled, this wrinkles would cover her countenance with a mask of premature age, and threatened soon to disfigure her entirely. And yet, from habit, and through passive obedience to routine, Maria José continued to dress like a young girl of a teen, in brightly-colored gowns, thin wastes, and white hats, that it'll became her frail and oldish face.

2:48:12She would remain for a long time in painful indecision, when it was a matter of peaking out some pieces of goods that was of to bright a red or blue. As if instinctively, she understood that this harmony of these hues with her age, whose rapid-oncoming they moreover placed in all the more noticeable contrast. And that such times, in Grassina and her daughters, would say to her, with a valence whose effect they little guessed, why is it zé? Why something and be done with it? How silly! They want to dress like a widow, what a notion! And at bottom, they meant it. None of them saw Maria José as she really was. Living with her day by day had served to efface the actual appearance of the faded old maid. For, in the minds of the mother and her daughters, who were moreover of frivolous and indifferent sort, zezé had grown to be the type, very vague to be sure, but the eternal type of young girl of marriageable years, who always should be well dressed and smiling.

2:49:13When she would be out, walking with her nieces of sixteen and seventeen years, who wore the same clothes that she herself did, but whose graceful and lively charm became their gay colors of youth so well, zezé's intelligence saw only too plainly the contrast between her and them. She would hold a lute from the laughing-set, rose, wounded, as if oppressed by an unspeakable shame. Ha, who can depict the secret chagrin of an old maid, who sees spiced by in useless monotony, her dark, loveless, the sparing days, without hope even of some event of personal interest, while about her moves the busy world of happier creatures, whose life has but one goal, who feel emotions and tenderness is. And who look upon her simply as an obscure accessory in the household of fares. They all loved her, of course, but not one of them suspected that she too could cherish those aspirations that are common to all human beings.

2:50:16Her self-denial seemed to be a most natural thing. Indeed, they hardly considered her in the light of a living person, she was no longer of any consequence. This was an attitude that satisfied the general ecotism of the family, and to which they all had grown accustomed, never suspecting the grievous aspect of her sacrifice which was hidden by a sentiment of proud dignity. So, when they would go to the theater, and the box held only five, and Rassina, her husband Fabio, and the three young ladies, Mariejo Zanou beforehand, that her sister, snugly wrapped in her opera cloak, would come to her and say gently in that purring voice of hers. You'll stay at home with the children tonight, won't you Zezé? Little Paul isn't very well, and I wouldn't think of leaving him with anybody else. And she would remain behind, without betraying the revolt within her, which, upon each occasion of these evidences of selfishness, would make the anemic blood in her veins tremble with agitation.

2:51:21Alone in the dining room, she would fly her needle mechanically, while her nephus would amuse themselves with the toys scattered upon the table, collared pictures and led soldiers. Every other moment they would call her. On Zezé, look at George pinching me! I am not! Paul hit me first! And the good hand would quiet them. Then, after both having put to sleep in their little twin-beds, she would rest her elbows upon the windowsill of her gloomy, outmaid's rim. In placing both hands beneath her sharp chin, her gaze directed towards heaven, she would lose herself in contemplation of the stars that shone in the limped sky, less lonely, surely, than she upon earth. In vain did her eyes seek in the eyes of another, that expression of sympathy and tenderness which alone would console her. The truth is that Maria José was suffering from the disappointment of unrequited passion. She had fallen in love with Monjardin, a poet and great friend of her brother-in-law Fabio.

2:52:26Monjardin came to the house every Sunday, older than she, almost forty, but having preserved all the attractiveness of youth, a black mostish, a vigorous yet graceful figure, eyes still bright, charming and white awake, Monjardin, without knowing it, had conquered Zezé. This had come about, in a rather curious manner. Finding the conversation of Fabio's wife and daughters to commonplace, Monjardin, when he would recite some of his poems or tell some story, connected with his literary life, preferred to address Maria José, from his thought to be of a serious and impressive nature. Let's have another poem, please, Mr. Monjardin, she would ask in supplicating tone. For instance, that one you call regrets, you know? And then he would describe in his verse the grief of a heart, disillisened and broken by the cruelties of fate, that evoked in vain the remembrance of yesterday's lost loves, vanished in the midst of eternal despair.

2:53:30He recited these bitter griefs in a strong, healthy man's voice, irract in the center of the parlor, looking mechanically, distractedly, at Maria José, with his dreamy eyes. The concentrated effort of his memory brought to his face an involuntary immobility, which Maria José, most deliciously touched, drank in. The poet had announced that he had written a poem, which he would recite that says as anniversary dinner. The date for this was but a few days distant, and ever since the poet's announcement, the whole family had taken to teasing the old maid, christening her, the muse of inspiration, and asking her when the wedding would take place. She smiled ingeniously, at such times her face would even take on an air of unusual happiness, her features grew animated, less wrinkled and more firm. On the day of the celebration, Maria José came out of her room radiant with hope. At the belt of her white dress bloomed the rose.

2:54:32A little blood, set pulsing by her agitated heart, brought a feeble collar to her marble cheeks, from which now protruded her long nose in a manner less displeasing than usual. See mama, remarked one of the nieces, doesn't Zazel look like a young girl today? They dined amidst Mary Chatter, seated directly across from Monja Hadan, Maria José, hiding her glances behind the fruit-bows that covered the table, looked at him furtively, without her fate. Her poor heart beat, as if it would burst, waiting in agonized suspense for the poem, in which the poet, without doubt, was to declare his intimate feelings for her. Monja Hadan had already pointed to his pocket as a token that he had the verses with him, and Zazel had trembled with gratification as she bashfully lowered her long face. Champagne sparkled in the glasses and toasts were given. Several guests of distinction spoke first, then followed the hosts and their children, frolic some little things.

2:55:38Finally, Monja Hadan rose and unfolded a manuscript, asking permission to declaim the verses which he had composed in honor of Maria José, the central figure of the occasion. The guests greeted his remarks with noisy and enthusiastic approbation, here, here! In gracina and her daughters leaned over and cast malicious glances in the direction of Maria José, but she was paying no attention to them. Her ears were buzzing, it seemed that everything was turning round. Monja Hadan, the center of all eyes, made pompous preparation. He pulled down his vest, arranged his leaves, and, in sun-rush, caddanced voice began to recite his elexendrins, scanning the lines impeccably. His poem opened with an eulogy of the ineffable virtue, compounded of self-abnegation and chestity, that distinguished the angelic creature who, with her wide tutillary wings, watched over the happiness of his dear friend's lovenest. He then recalled that the date of this day commemorated the happy birth of a being of immaculate purity, Maria José, a veritable saint, who had renounced all her own aspirations, so that she might consecrate herself entirely to the duties of her sister's family.

2:56:58Gentle figure of the mother guardian, who would soon be the beloved grandmother, sharing with her sister the joys of younger households, which would soon be formed, offsprings of that home, which her devoted tenderness as aunt and sister at present cultivated. As he came to a close, the poet raised his cup of sparkling wine, and, in exalted voice, drank to the health of José amidst the loud huzas of all present. Long live, Aunt José! Ho referent, Aunt José! cried the children, glass in hand, while the nieces laughed loudly, blushing to the ears, for they had understood very well the poet's reference to future younger households. Fabian, his wife, their eyes somewhat brightened by the strong champagne, proposed in turn their toast to José. Here's to José, and the eighteen happy years we've lived together. Maria José, as soon as she had seized the significance of Monjardin's verses, had grown deathly pale.

2:58:01Stricted by sudden disillusionment, she felt a glacial chill overwhelm her body to the very marrow. She feared that she would faint straight away, and provide a spectacle for the guests, who were all drinking her health, their eyes focused upon her. A veil of tears spread before her sight, in vain she tried to repress them, to force a smile of thanks upon her face. The smile wrinkled into a dollarous grimace. She succeeded only in convulsing her contracted visage with the sobs that she sought to restrain. Overcombat last, humiliated, powerless, she broke into tears, and this unforeseen denuma put an end at once to all the pleasure of the dinner. José, José, what ails you? And Racina had rushed to her side in alarm. Everyone rose, seeking the reason for the outburst. They surrounded the poor creature whose head had sunk upon the table, in the midst of the rose petals, the fruits and the glasses which were strewn in charming confusion.

2:59:05What is the trouble? A nervous attack perhaps? Confusion produced in her by the touching poem. Finally, they raised Mariejez's head and bathed in cold water, whereupon the face of the poor old maids stood revealed in all the ugliness that her spasms of convulsive weeping cast over it, with her large, echo-in-nose, her protruding eyes and her livid lips. And now, Monjardin drew near. Dallically raising the icy fingers of Mariejez, he lifted them to the edge of his perfumed moustache and placed upon them a grateful kiss. Then, turning to ingress in as daughters he had, with a solemn, self-complace in tone. And, as estiers, are the most beautiful homage that could be rendered to my poor verses. End of Section 6 End of Brazilian Tales by Various Authors, translated by Isaac Goldberg