Again it was the council of the neighbors, whom he saw, from a distance, gathered together, and who were, to a certainty, tearing to pieces the poor girl’s reputation. It seemed to him a repetition of the aria of the Calumnia in the “Barber of Seville.” The voice of slander, at first soft as a zephyr, rises in a terrible crescendo, until it bursts forth all at once like a clap of thunder. He took a roundabout way so as not to have to meet the eyes of Paula and the keeper of the tobacco-shop. He was ashamed of every one. He chanced to meet Teixeira Azevedo, who said to him,—
“Has not Jorge come home yet? What the deuce! Does he intend to remain away forever?”
And this trivial remark filled him with terror. At last he went one day to look for Julião. He found him in his room in his shirt-sleeves, and in slippers, uncombed, with a coffee-pot beside him. The dirty floor was strewn with cigar-ends. Books were lying open on the unmade bed, and on all sides were signs of great disorder.
At his entrance Julião straightened himself up; he shook himself, rolled a cigarette, and said that he had been at work since seven o’clock in the morning. Ah, it was a fine thing to work! He would like to see how the Senhor Sebastião would stand it!
“For the rest, you have come just in time. I was about to send a message to your house. I was to have received money, and it has not come. Give me a libra.”
And then he began to speak about his thesis. The thing was turning out well. He read paragraphs to Sebastião from the prologue, with paternal delectation, well pleased with his labor. In a burst of confidence resulting from his excitement he said, taking rapid strides up and down the room,—
“I am going to show them that there are still Portuguese in Portugal, Sebastião. I am going to open their eyes; you shall see.”
He sat down and began to number the sheets already written. Sebastião, reluctant to disturb with private anxieties these lofty scientific interests, said hesitatingly, and in a low voice,—
“I have come to talk to you about our friends.”
But the door opened suddenly, and a young man with a neglected-looking beard and weak eyes entered the room. He was a student at the School, and a friend of Julião. Almost immediately they recommenced a discussion which they had begun in the morning, and which had been interrupted at eleven o’clock, at which hour the young man with the weak eyes was obliged to go to Aurea to breakfast.