In the seminary … Oh, no! I’m not going to tell the story of my life at the seminary: nor would a single chapter be enough. No, dear sir; it is possible that some day I may compose a brief account of what I saw and experienced there, of the people I lived with, of the customs of the place, and everything else. This itch to write, when you catch it in your fifties, never goes away. One may be cured of it in one’s youth; to go no further, right here in the seminary there was a fellow student who wrote verses, in the manner of Junqueira Freire, poet and monk, whose book had recently appeared.* He took orders; years later I encountered him in the choir of the church of São Pedro, and asked him to show me his latest verses.
“What verses?” he asked, somewhat startled.
“Yours. Don’t you remember, at the seminary …”
“Ah!” he smiled.
He smiled, and while he carried on looking in an open book for the time he had to say mass the following day, he confessed to me that he not had written any more poetry since being ordained. It had tickled him when he was young: now he’d scratched himself, it was over, and he was fine. And he spoke to me in prose of an infinite number of events of the day, the high cost of living, Father X’s sermon … a vicar’s post in Minas…
The opposite of this was a seminarist who did not enter the Church. He was called … There’s no need to give his name; his story is enough. He had written a Panegyric of Saint Monica, which had earned praise from some quarters, and at that time was read by the seminarists.* He got permission to print it, and dedicated it to St. Augustine. All this is ancient history; what is more recent is that one day, in 1882, when I was attending to some business in the Navy Department, I came across this ex-colleague of mine, who was now head of an administrative section. He had left the seminary, abandoned letters, married, and forgotten everything except the Panegyric of Saint Monica, some twenty-nine pages, which he went on handing out in later life. As I needed some information, I went to ask him for it, and one couldn’t have asked for more courtesy and efficiency; he gave me everything, clearly, correctly, and copiously. Naturally we talked of the past, personal memories, things that happened in class, trivial incidents, a book, a word, a saying, all the old rubbish spilled out, and we laughed and sighed together. We spent a while recalling our memories of the seminary. Whether because of their associations with the place, or because we were young then, the memories had such power to bring happiness that if there had been any shadow over it in the past, it did not appear now. He confessed that he had lost contact with all his friends from the seminary.
“Me too, or almost all; no doubt they all went back to their provinces when they were ordained, and the ones from here must have taken posts elsewhere.”
“Happy times!” he sighed.
Then, after some reflection, fixing me with faded, insistent eyes, he asked me:
“Have you kept my Panegyric?”
I didn’t know what to say; I tried to move my lips, but not a word would come out; finally, I asked:
“Panegyric? What panegyric?”
“My Panegyric of Saint Monica.”
I didn’t remember straight away, but the explanation should have been enough; and after some moments of mental investigation, I answered that I had kept it for a long time, but what with moving house, travels…
“I’ll bring you a copy.”
Before twenty-four hours were up, he was in my house, with the pamphlet, a twenty-six-year-old pamphlet, soiled, marked by time, but with no missing pages, and a respectful, hand-written dedication.
“It’s the second-last copy,” he said to me, “now I’ve only got one left, and that I cannot give to anyone.”
And, seeing me leafing through the little book:
“See if you remember any passages,” he said.
A twenty-six-year interval can put an end to closer, more constant friendships than this, but it was a matter of courtesy, charity even, to remember some page or other; I read one of them, stressing certain phrases to give him the impression that they had found an echo in my memory. He agreed that they were beautiful, but he preferred others, and pointed them out.
“Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course. The Panegyric of Saint Monica! How it takes me back to my youth! I’ve never forgotten the seminary, believe me. The years go by, one thing happens after another, new sensations, new friendships that go the way of all flesh, too; such is life … Well, dear colleague, nothing has obscured the memory of that time we spent together, the priests, the lessons, our games … you remember the games we used to play? Father Lopes, oh, Father Lopes …”
Staring into space, he must have been listening, and of course heard what I had said, but he only said one thing, and even that after staying silent for a while: he brought his eyes back into focus and sighed:
“It’s certainly been a success, my Panegyric!”