Francisca

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1

Francisca

"Most illustrious and excellent Madam.

My dearest friend,

Your Excellency has certainly

given due recognition

to my pungent sorrow,

and equal afflictions.

I wish to give you

and Mr. Raimundo Borges,

my condolences

for the fateful event.

Your excellencies feel it

as the loss of a brother,

but I feel it as the loss of a son,

whom I loved so much.

I miss you, my friend,

as I miss the angel that I lost.

Goodbye dear friend,

I cannot continue now,

because my eyes

will not allow me too.

Keep believing, my good friend,

you true friend.

And accept my

deepest feelings,

even though I'm not

going to visit you.

My regards to your husband.

Yours truly:

Of your Excellency

a friend like no other,

Maria Rita da Rocha Owen

Vilar de Paraso

September 23rd, 1854."

Most Illustrious and excellent madam.

Your Excellency has certainly

due recognition

to my pungent sorrow,

and equal afflictions.

I wish to give you

and Mr. Raimundo Borges,

my condolences

for the fatal event.

Your excellencies feel it

as the loss of a brother,

but I feel it as the loss of a son,

whom I loved so much.

I miss you, my friend,

as I miss the angel that I lost.

Goodbye, dear friend,

I cannot continue now,

because my eyes

will not allow me to.

Keep believing, my good friend,

you true friend.

And accept

my deepest feelings,

even though I'm not

going to visit you.

My regards to your husband.

Yours truly:

Of your Excellency

a friend like no other,

Maria Rita da Rocha Owen

Vilar de Paraso

September 23rd, 1854."

With the independence of Brazil,

Portugal was taken by

a wave of instability

and despair.

The death of D. Joao VI

divided the kingdom

between the partisans of his two sons,

D. Pedro and D. Miguel,

who were leaders

of antagonistic movements,

liberalism and absolutism.

Many young men, whose

traditionalist ideals were, in 1847,

defeated by the civil war,

now incarnate a sceptical type,

given to destructive passions.

This is the true story

of the destructive passion

of Jos Augusto

and Fanny (Francisca).

It was a masked ball,

in Oporto, and Jos Augusto

had come in only to

ward off boredom.

Soon he regretted

having done so,

for his mourning for his mother

was still much too recent.

Sad?

Camilo's room

in the Paris Hotel, in Oporto.

- What are you staring at, Jos

Augusto? - Nothing.

We were talking about infinity,

about love and magnetism.

We were talking about women,

and yet you seem distant.

Don't you want to come with me to

Lodeiro, to spend a season?

I do. But weren't you supposed

to be traveling?

I intend to. But I must close

some deals before that.

Come with me.

You know what I'm offering.

The house looks like a mausoleum,

with an old out of tune piano

and alcoves that stink of death.

Then I'll go, my friend Jos.

Two poor devils are the best

consolation for one another.

How can one be virtuous

in a prosperous city

that yet cannot move

a single inch forward?

Here, in this city, the literati

praise each other

because they are

equally poor.

Here we must be sensible

to gratitude,

so that we do not become

accustumed to the role of well-doers.

Let us go to Lodeiro, my friend.

What shall we do there?

You will write. I will walk.

Both occupations are

protected from ridicule.

Oh, no, they're not.

Ridicule can survive

even in the mansion of the dead.

Just read the epitaphs.

But it does not matter.

We'll see if we, accustumed

as we are to listen to small talk,

will find it tedious

to have serious conversations.

Santa Cruz do Douro

House of Lodeiro

Lovely! I had guessed so!

So you are byronian,

like five percent

of elegant Portuguese men.

- Five percent? What about the others?

- Others are

simply great men.

Byron is fashionable.

And in literature, fashion

is worse than anywhere else.

I don't know if I read this somewhere

but if I didn't,

I say it myself.

Fashionable or not, when it comes

to amorous literature,

you and I

both have dusty wigs

and buckled shoes.

- Was it in the ball that you saw her?

- It was there that we met.

You must come with me to the ball,

and I will see you

showing off those silken socks

in the delirium of a waltz.

I don't dance.

I am not a mechanical toy,

embracing the alabaster statue

who is the feuilletonist's muse.

But, tell me, how is she like?

Her face does not belong to this time

or to this climate.

She reminds me of the Viragos

that Virgil described.

I didn't like it, I tell you without the

slightest fatuousness. I didn't like it.

Then they told me that she was

very conversant with literature.

In women, intelligence is either

born with the heart,

or kills it, if it comes later.

You know very well that

what I wanted

was to find a new heart, without

experience, without knowledge.

- And to educate it myself.

- Now that is fatuousness.

In any case, we exchanged

three letters, and that was all.

After the third one, I packed my

luggage and came to the Douro.

- Things didn't go beyond that.

- The things that lure us.

- What did you tell her in the

last letter? - I called her sister.

When I'm not interested in a woman,

I offer her the honors of a relative.

- And she?

- She replied to me.

She said something

like this:

"Your sister!

With that affection I shall once

understand everyone's pleasures.

My friend, she has caught you!

What? Me?

Didn't you create

the need for a distance?

Didn't you calculate the incoveniences

of intimacy, as you say?

Come on, my friend.

Let us not be strong

when the honorable thing is to be weak.

Distance? Intimacy? It was her

who broke the distance.

Any other man

would have taken the opportunity.

You talk of Maria in a spiteful

manner; you are an obstinate man.

You can't forgive Maria her suffering.

You have no love,

you are jealous of pain.

You are a case for study.

A few days later.

My friend and illustrious writer,

Camilo Castelo Branco.

Mi sister-in-law,

Dona Josefa.

and my brother Raimundo.

Portugal is becoming a model

for equality. The Baron's kind.

I live in a street with

five barons, two viscounts

and ten commendators.

All of which are highly commendable.

Don't think that I reproach it. No.

I have some bats

of scepticism flying around my head

with their black wings.

But, forgetting this crisis,

I am a poor devil and I think,

seriously and daily,

about becoming a baron.

Brother, can't you achieve that with

the conspiracies at the royal court?

Now that they want to reinstitute

the processions

that D. Pedro had abolished,

and that they are even thinking of

dressing up soldiers as friars,

I could well be a Baron,

for I also have the talent for that.

What's wrong, Jos Augusto? Have a

seat; you didn't have your dessert.

Jos Augusto is in love.

Do you know what love is?

It's the soul's louse,

the vine's mildew.

And Jos Augusto is in love,

for the 20th time in his lifetime.

A very good lady.

Are there many like that around here?

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