Before going on to the embargoes, let’s explain something that has already been explained, but not very well. You have seen (Chapter CX) that I asked a music teacher in São Paulo to transcribe the tune of the sweet-seller’s refrain from Matacavalos. In itself, it is a trivial subject, and is not worth the trouble of one chapter, let alone two; but there are things like this which provide interesting lessons, even agreeable ones. Let’s explain what has already been explained.
Capitu and I had sworn not to forget that refrain; it was at a moment of great tenderness, and the divine notary has knowledge of things that are sworn in such moments, and writes them down in the eternal books.
“Do you swear?”
“I swear,” she said, extending her arm tragically.
I took advantage of the gesture to kiss her hand; I was still at the seminary. When I went to São Paulo, wanting one day to remember the tune, I realized that I was on the way to forgetting if, I managed to remember it, and hurried to the teacher, who did me the favor of writing it out on the scrap of paper. I did this so as not to break my oath. But can you believe that, when I went back to the old papers, that night in Glória, again I couldn’t remember the tune or the words? My sin was to be so particular about the oath: as for forgetting, anyone can forget.
The truth is that no one knows if they will keep an oath or not. Who knows what the future holds? Therefore, our political constitution, which has substituted a simple affirmation for an oath, is profoundly moral.* It did away with a terrible sin. To break one’s word is always disloyal, but for someone who is more fearful of God than men it will not matter if he lies once in a while, so long as he does not put his soul in purgatory. Don’t confuse purgatory with hell, which is eternal shipwreck. Purgatory is a pawn shop, which loans money against all the virtues, short term and at high interest. But the periods can be renewed, until one day one or two middling virtues pay off all the sins, great and small.