So then, one day Capitu wanted to know what was making me silent and irritable. And she proposed Europe, Minas, Petrópolis, a series of balls, a thousand of those remedies recommended for the melancholy. I didn’t know what to reply; I refused the diversions. As she insisted, I replied that business was bad. Capitu smiled to cheer me up. What did it matter if things were bad? They would get better again, and meanwhile the jewels and objects of any value would be sold, and we would go and live in some back alley. We would live quietly, forgotten by the world; then we would come back to the surface. The tenderness with which she said this would have moved a stone. But it was no good. I curtly replied that there was no need to sell anything. I went on being silent and irritable. She proposed a game of cards or draughts, a walk, a visit to Matacavalos; and, as I agreed to nothing, she went to the drawing-room, opened the piano, and began to play. I took advantage of her absence, took my hat and went out.
… I beg your pardon, but this chapter should have been preceded by another, recounting an incident that happened a few weeks earlier, two months after Sancha’s departure. I’ll write it now; I could insert it before this one, before I send the book to the press, but it’s a great nuisance to alter the page numbers; I’ll leave this as it is, and then the narration will go straight on to the end. Anyway, it’s short.