Bazilio remained silent. From the moment of their arrival at Santa Apolonia, recollections of Luiza, of the romance of the past summer, began to throng upon him, exercising over him a powerful fascination. Leaning against the window he contemplated the scene before him. The moon, cold and pale, pursued her course among the clouds; a luminous network covered the surface of the water at times with shifting lights; then everything was plunged again in obscurity, unbroken save for the indistinct shapes looming up here and there, or the lantern of some vessel shining coldly.
“What is she doing now?” thought Bazilio. “Has she gone to sleep yet?” How little she imagined he was back again in his room in the Central Hotel!
They supped. Bazilio took the bottle of brandy with him to his room, and with his face covered with rice-powder, and the collar of his shirt thrown open, he gave himself up, stretched at full length in bed, and smoking a cigar, to his sensations of luxurious lassitude. Presently he smiled, and his gaze wandered to the ceiling.
“What the deuce!” he said to himself; “she is a lovely girl. It is well worth while!”
He drank a glass of brandy, and was soon sound asleep.
At the same hour Jorge, alone in his room, sitting motionless in his chair, and breaking into sobs from time to time, was also thinking of her. In his room below Sebastião was shedding tears silently. Julião, stretched at full length on a sofa in the hospital, was reading the “Revue des Deux Mondes.” Leopoldina was dancing at a soirée at the Cunhas; every one else was sleeping. And the chill wind that swept the clouds across the face of the heavens, and caused the gas-jets to flicker in their globes, stirred with a melancholy motion the branches of the tree that hung over the grave of Luiza.
Bazilio left his hotel at an early hour in the morning and went to find a decent coupé. Pinteos saw him from a distance, and drove towards him, saying, “Here is Pinteos, Senhor.”
He smiled, charmed to see the Senhor Dom Bazilio again.
“To the Patriarchal, Pinteos.”
“To the senhora’s? We will be there in a flash, Senhor,” he said, mounting into the driver’s seat, and touching the horses with his whip.