Left on my own, I sat thinking for a while, and had a fantasy. You’re already familiar with my fantasies. I’ve recounted the Emperor’s visit; I’ve told you about the house here in Engenho Novo, which reproduces the Matacavalos house … My imagination has been the companion of my whole existence, lively, quick, restless, sometimes timid and inclined to stop short, but more often capable of covering huge areas in its flight. I think it was in Tacitus that I read that Iberian mares conceive from the wind; if it wasn’t there, it was in some other ancient author, who decided to record this superstition in his books.* In this respect, my imagination was a great Iberian mare; the least breeze brought forth a foal, and that foal soon turned into Alexander’s horse; but enough of daring metaphors, unsuitable for a fifteen-year-old. Let me tell the story simply. The fantasy at that moment was to confess my love to my mother, so as to tell her that I had no vocation for the Church. The discussion about vocation all came back to me now, and, while it alarmed me, it also offered me a way out. “Yes, that’s it,” I thought, “I’ll tell Mamma I have no vocation, and confess our loves; if she has any doubts, I’ll tell her what happened the other day, the combing of the hair and the rest …”