Sebastião’s great passion was the piano. Following the advice of Jorge’s mother, who was her neighbor and her intimate friend, his mother provided a master for him. From the very first lessons, at which, in a red velvet gown, and covered with trinkets, she assisted, the old professor Achilles Bentes, who had a face and eyes like those of an owl, declared, in his nasal voice,—
“Dear lady, your son is a genius. Yes, he is a genius! He will be a Rossini! We must push him forward!”
But this was precisely what she did not wish to do,—to push forward the little one. Therefore he did not become a Rossini, which did not prevent old Bentes from continuing to say,—
“He will be a Rossini!”
Only that instead of proclaiming it aloud, brandishing his roll of music, he now murmured it softly under his breath, rubbing his knotty hands together.
At this epoch the two youthful neighbors, Jorge and Sebastião, became intimate. Jorge, the more active and enterprising of the two, ruled his comrade. In their sports in the garden Sebastião, if they played coach, was always the horse; if they played soldiers, he was always the defeated party. He carried the heavy things; he allowed Jorge to jump over his back, at leap-frog; in their feasts he contented himself with the bread and left the fruits to Jorge. This friendship, uninterrupted and unclouded, was to remain, throughout Sebastião’s life, an essential and permanent element in it.
When Jorge’s mother died, they thought for a time of living together in the house of Sebastião, which was larger than Jorge’s, and which had a garden. Jorge had some intention of buying a horse; but solitude inspired him with sentimental ideas of marriage. He saw Luiza in the Passeio, and for two months passed entire days in the street of the Magdalena.
Thus all that smiling plan which they had called laughingly the Society of Jorge and Sebastião fell to the ground like a house of cards. Sebastião felt for a long time a keen sensation of regret. Afterwards it was he who provided the bouquets of roses which Jorge carried Luiza, stripping them carefully of their thorns, and wrapping them in tissue-paper. He it was who made ready the nest; he looked for the upholsterer, discussed the prices of the stuffs, superintended the workmen who were putting down the carpets, and arranged the necessary documents for the marriage.
At night, no matter how fatigued he might be from all these labors, he was obliged to listen, with a smiling countenance, to Jorge, who, very much in love, would walk up and down the room in his shirt-sleeves till two o’clock in the morning, dilating on his happiness and smoking his pipe.
After the wedding, Sebastião found himself very lonely. He went to Portel to see his uncle, an eccentric old man, with the look of an imbecile, who spent his days inventing new graftings in his garden, and reading and re-reading the “Eurico.”