Júlio Ribeiro (1845–1890) was a Brazilian journalist, grammarian and writer. Republican, abolitionist and free-thinker, widely read and highly educated (largely self-taught), his two novels bracket a writing career which was devoted principally to journalism, but also included philological works and vehement political pamphleteering. He lived to see slavery abolished and the Republic founded before he died of tuberculosis at the age of only 45. On the foundation of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 he was selected as the patron of chair N° 24 by its founder, Garcia Redondo.

After a childhood education with his schoolmistress mother he...

Doctor Lopes Matoso was not exactly what you might call a fortunate man. At the age of eighteen, when he had barely finished his schooling, he lost his mother and father within a few months of one another.

His guardian was a friend of the family, a Colonel Barbosa, who made him continue with his studies and qualify in law.

The day after his graduation, his honest guardian entrusted him with the management of the large fortune which was his, saying: ‘My boy, you are rich and qualified, and have a bright future before you. Now you should marry, have...

At first, Lenita’s loneliness on thefazendawas horrible, worse than in the city. The old woman, as well as being an invalid, was very deaf. Colonel Barbosa himself, a little younger than his octogenarian wife, suffered from rheumatism and at times kept to his bed for days on end. The divorced son had been away for months shooting in Paranapanema.

The work of thefazendawas managed by acaboclo⁴ administrator, friendly enough but totally ignorant of anything which did not have to do with his work.

Lenita almost always ate on the huge veranda. After luncheon or dinner...

The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled.

Lenita, after a long sleep, awoke calm, her nerves settled, her muscles relaxed and limber. But she was weak and depressed, complaining of a heavy head and a deep tiredness. She stayed in bed for two days, and was only able to get up on the third.

Her appetite returned little by little, she began to eat regular meals with enjoyment.

It would seem that she had only now begun to recover from the organic cataclysm of the death of her father.

Lenita felt that she had changed. She no longer had her old masculine...

Her return to health was plain to see.

She woke early, drank a cup of warm milk, went out for a walk in the fields, ate a healthy luncheon and then sat down at the piano where she played martial musiccon brio, cheerful, rousing pieces with bouncing rhythms.

She would go to the orchard where she ate the fruit and climbed in the trees.

She dined, supped and then went to bed, sleeping the night through.

She took on a new lease of life, frequently looking at herself in the mirror, adding saucy touches to her dress and putting...

The first day of the cane milling had arrived.

Already the previous day the blacks had been busy sweeping out the mill-house, washing the mill troughs and spouts, sanding and polishing the pans and the alembic with large quantities of lemon and ashes.

Dawn was barely breaking when a narrow discoloured strip could be seen in the green of the cane-field opposite, which gradually expanded, advancing lengthwise. The cutting had started. The white cotton clothes, the blue skirts of the female slaves, the red worsted shirts of the men, marked bright, vivid points in that ocean of pale green, swayed...

The cane milling was over, and spring was well advanced.

The annual change of the seasons had rejuvenated the tropical forest; the shoots, the buds, the new fronds had burst into exuberance; here a pale, tender green, very delicate and velvety, there shiny as glass, with rusty tones, and elsewhere fiery red. In time, all would expand, gain strength, consolidate into strong, vigorous, healthy greenery.

Nature had put on new clothing — the season of love was upon her.

Florescence had burst out in all its luxuriance of shapes, its prodigality of shades, its extravagance of perfumes.

Over the dark coffee...

It had been raining continuously for almost a week. Water dripped from the soaking fronds of the joyous, luxuriant, shining forests. The thick, sodden carpet of dead leaves which covered the jungle floor disintegrated, reverted to humus. The bare earth of the roads grew green and slimy on the slopes and ramps, turned on the flat to waterlogged, semi-liquid clay, rutted by the wheel-tracks of the carts, stirred, beaten and kneaded by the feet of the cattle; now swelled in pillows of mud, now hollowed into pools of dirty water, here yellow, there blood-red. The water rushed down the hillsides...

The rain had stopped, the weather was magnificent. The white sunlight filtered down through the fine air from the blue, cloudless sky. Nature expanded happily like an invalid returning to life, a convalescent.

Lenita rose in good health, but bored and irritated. The memory of Manuel Barbosa tortured her. To have to meet him every minute of the day, at table, in the drawing room, walking about the house and the yard; to see him lounging, rocking in the rocking-chairs, with his mane of hair, his grizzled beard… it was horrible.

When she was called in for luncheon she went...

A major commission house had gone bankrupt in Santos. As a result, the Colonel had lost nearly thirtycontos.²⁶

‘That trading centre was aCaco’s Cave, a Calabria!’²⁷said he, on hearing the news one morning. They were bleeding the plantation-owner dry; mixing the good coffee, which he sent, with the sweepings and with second grade beans bought on the cheap; and they called this honest dealingcrammingormaking bulk— and they were absolutely right because they were cramming themselves with money, a huge bulk of looted cash! They rendered sales accounts to the landowner as and when...

Night had fallen.

There was no moon, but the night was bright. The stars were spread improbably thickly against the transparent tropical sky, like handfuls of luminous flour on a black cloth.

The yard in front of the slaves’ quarters had been swept and a fire was crackling cheerfully, the glow from its heart and the constantly changing, flickering tongues of flame dispelling the darkness.

The slaves had finished weeding the canes that day and the Colonel had given them the rest of the day off, and had ordered the administrator to hand out a generous ration of cane spirit.

They were dancing to...

It was many days since Barbosa’s departure, and all he had written was a business letter to the Colonel, saying that he hoped to salvage thirty percent of the merchandise.

At first Lenita sent the boy into town every day to fetch the post. Long before he was due to return, she was at the door looking out for him. When his outline, dressed in white cotton and joggled by the trot of an old grey donkey, appeared at the top of the hill as a moving white blob against the dull yellow of the road, she would run to...

The black foreman had come to tell Lenita that birds were gathering in large numbers on a fruit tree in the jungle.

She ordered a trail to be cut from the track to the tree, had her Galand shotgun cleaned, loaded two hundred cartridges, and the following day before dawn set out with her maid to lie in wait.

Not much dew had fallen, and it was still very dark.

The trail, covered with a velvety layer of fine, yellowish sand, was wet from the thick mist which lay draped over the earth. The jungle formed a compact black mass....

In 1887, life in the interior of São Paulo province was still completely feudal.

The provincialfazendawas in every way the equal of a selfgoverning statelet of the Middle Ages. Thefazendeirohad a private prison, and enjoyedlegal jurisdiction; he was indeedlord and master. In ruling hissubjectshe was guided by a single code — his sovereign will. He was indeed beyond the reach of justice; he was not subject to the written laws.

At every moment and in every respect he could count on the unfailing acquiescence of the authorities, and on the rare occasions when he...

It seemed that the snake venom had tainted Lenita’s blood.

She was seized with sudden fits of spiritual lassitude, just as when she had first arrived at thefazenda.

She gave up hunting, she gave up reading; her thirst for science was extinguished.

At any moment she would sit in the hammock, or a rocking-chair, and sink into a day-dream. She ate little — almost nothing.

At times she would lean over the table, lay down her head and take a pencil, a flower, any small object, and turn it and turn it in her hands, beating a strange rhythm, for...

‘What a beautiful day!’ exclaimed the Colonel, standing in the door which led out to the yard. ‘Settled weather, for sure! Jacinto!’

‘Yes, Massah!’ An old negro answered his summons.

‘Where are they working today?’

‘Gone to cut rice, yes Massah.’

‘Where’s Manduca?’

‘Young massah had the skewball saddled, and went into town, yes Massah.’

The Colonel took a deep draught of the fresh, pure air of the resplendent morning. He had slept all night, not so much as a twinge, and he felt in fine fettle. He would have liked to spread himself, to converse.

‘Just today when I’m...

Lenita had sent the maid away and slept alone in her room. The Colonel didn’t like it, couldn’t understand it. It was dangerous — she might fall ill, have an attack in the night, with no one to look after her.

No, Lenita replied: she was quite alright, there was no fear of an attack; besides, the girl snored, and that stopped her from sleeping.

Barbosa arrived at about eleven o’clock at night; quietly, stepping with care, he entered the sitting room and locked the door from the inside.

The carefully oiled hinges worked easily, with a smooth, light action, without...

The new cane milling had started some time ago. It was almost halfway through when a disaster occurred. A black boy got caught in the drums of the mill and his arm was crushed.

When he saw the unfortunate child caught and being drawn in by the slow, implacable turning of the insensate mechanism, his father, the negro mill-master, took up a steel weigh-beam which he found to hand and thrust it between the teeth of the drums.

There was a tremendous clashing of metal, the loud clanging of breaking ironwork, and the mill stopped.

The boy’s life was saved...

Six days after Lenita’s departure, Barbosa arrived.

He knew nothing, the Colonel had not written.

From the moment he crossed the crest of the hill he started to look ahead, expecting at any moment to see the girl’s form at a window, in the yard, anywhere. He looked forward to the pleasure of seeing her trembling with delight on sighting him, and running out to meet him, pale, shaking, convulsed with emotion.

He thought of the night, and a shiver ran through him; he put the thought of that pleasure far out of his mind, so as to forget also...