It happened that, one Monday, as I was going back to the seminary, I saw a lady fall down in the street. My first reaction, in such a case, ought to have been of pity or laughter; it was neither one thing or the other, because—and this is what I would have liked to have said in Latin—because the lady was wearing very well-washed stockings, and she didn’t dirty them, and had silk garters, and didn’t lose them. Several people went to help her, but they had no opportunity to lift her from the ground; she got up very annoyed, dusted herself off, thanked them, and disappeared down the next street.
“This fashion for imitating the French girls on the Rua do Ouvidor,” said José Dias to me, as he walked along and commented on the fall, “is obviously wrong.* Our girls should walk as they always did, slowly and leisurely, not with this Frenchified tick-tack, tick-tack …”
I hardly heard him. The lady’s stockings and garters whitened and curled around in front of me, then walked on, fell, got up, and went away. When we got to the corner, I looked down the street, and saw our unfortunate lady in the distance, going at the same pace, tick-tack, tick-tack…
“It doesn’t look as if she hurt herself,” I said.
“So much the better for her, but she must have scratched her knees; it’s nothing more than a fad, scurrying around like that …”
I think he said “fad”; I stopped at the “scratched knees.” From that moment, until I got to the seminary, I didn’t see a woman in the street that I didn’t want to fall; some I guessed were wearing their stockings well stretched, with tight garters … Maybe there were some who weren’t even wearing stockings … But I saw them with them on … Or… It’s also possible…
I intersperse this with ellipses, to give an idea of my thoughts, which were diffuse and confused in just this manner; but I am probably not conveying what I mean. My head was hot, and I felt unsteady on my feet. In the seminary, the first hour was unbearable. The cassocks began to look like skirts, and brought back the lady’s fall. It was no longer just one that fell; every one I met in the street now showed me her blue garters in a flash: they were blue. At night, I dreamt of them. A multitude of abominable creatures started walking round me, tick-tack, tick-tack … They were beautiful, some slim, others plump, and all of them as agile as the devil. I woke up, and tried to drive them away with curses and other methods, but as soon as I went back to sleep they came back, and hand in hand around me, they made a vast circle of skirts, or, mounted in the air, rained legs and feet on my head. It went on like this till dawn. I could sleep no longer, and prayed paternosters, ave marias and credos. Since this book is the unvarnished truth, I have to confess that I had to interrupt my prayers to accompany a faraway figure, tick-tack, tick-tack… I hurriedly went back to my prayer, always picking it up in the middle to get it right, as if there had been no interruption, but no doubt I didn’t start where I had left off.
Since the evil continued into the early morning, I tried to defeat it, but in such a way that I wouldn’t lose it altogether. Wise men of the Scriptures, divine what I did. This was the answer: since I could not turn these images away from me, I had recourse to a treaty between my conscience and my imagination. These female visions would from now on be thought of as simple incarnations of the vices, and for that very reason susceptible of contemplation, as the best way of tempering the character and of arming it for the harsh struggles of life. I didn’t formulate this in words, nor was it necessary to do so; the contract was made tacitly, with some repugnance, but it was made. And for some days, it was I myself who called up these visions to strengthen myself, and did not reject them until they themselves went away exhausted.