No, the idea of going to the funeral did not come from thinking about the carriage and its pleasures. It had another origin: it was that, if I accompanied the funeral the next day, I would not go to the seminary, and could visit Capitu again, for a longer time. That’s what it was. The idea of the carriage might have come later, as an accessory, but that was the principal, immediate thought. I would go back to the Rua dos Inválidos, on the pretext of asking after Miss Gurgel. I was counting on everything coming out just as it had that day, Gurgel distressed, Capitu with me on the sofa, our hands clasped, her hair…
“I’ll ask Mamma.”
I opened the gate. Before I went through, just as I had heard the voice of the dead boy’s father in my memory, now I heard his mother’s, and I repeated in a low-pitched voice:
“Poor Manduca!”