Destiny is not only a dramatist—it is also its own stage manager. That is, it sets up the characters’ entrances on stage, gives them letters and other objects, and makes the offstage noises corresponding to the dialogue: a roll of thunder, a carriage, a gunshot. When I was young they performed here a play in some theater or other, which ended with the Last Judgement.* The principal character was Ahasuerus, who in the last scene ended a monologue with this exclamation: “I hear the archangel’s trumpet!” No trumpet was heard. Embarrassed, Ahasuerus repeated the words, louder this time, to cue the stage manager—still nothing. Then he went to the back of the stage, looking tragic, but in fact to whisper into the wings, in a low voice: “The cornet! the cornet! the cornet!” The audience overheard his words and burst into laughter, until, at the moment when the trumpet really sounded, and Ahasuerus shouted for the third time that it was the archangel’s trumpet, a wag in the stalls below corrected him: “No sir, it’s the archangel’s cornet!”
This explains my standing beneath Capitu’s window and seeing a man on horseback pass, a dandy as we said at the time. He was mounted on a fine sorrel horse, firm in the saddle, the reins in his left hand, his right on his waist, patent leather boots, an elegant figure and posture: his face was not unfamiliar to me. Others had passed by, and others would come later; they were all on the way to see their sweethearts. At that time people went courting on horseback. Reread Alencar: “Because a student [says one of his characters in a play staged in 1858] can’t be without these two things, a horse and a sweetheart.”* Reread Alvares de Azevedo: one of his poems, of 1851, tells us that he lived in Catumbi, and to go and see his sweetheart in Catete, he had rented a horse for three milreis …† Three milreis! How everything disappears into time’s abyss!
Well, the dandy on the bay horse did not pass by like the others; he was the trumpet of the Last Judgement that sounded, and at the right moment; that is the way of Destiny, which is its own stage manager. The horseman was not content with passing by, but turned his head towards us, towards Capitu, and he looked at Capitu and Capitu at him; the horse went on, and the horseman kept looking backwards. This was the second time the fangs of jealousy bit into me. Admittedly, it was natural to look at elegant passers-by; but this fellow usually passed that way in the afternoon. He lived in the old Campo da Aclamação, and then … and then …†† Just try to reason with a burning heart like mine at that moment! I didn’t even say anything to Capitu; I came away from the street in a hurry, ran down the corridor, and next thing I knew I was in the living room.