“Is that book you have there a novel?” Luiza asked him.
“No,” he responded in an important tone; “it is a treatise of Dr. Lee on the diseases of women.”
Luiza blushed, and Bazilio, repressing a smile, asked her what had become of Raphaela Grijo, who used to come sometimes to the house in the street of the Magdalena,—the lady who wore spectacles, and had a brother-in-law who stammered.
“Her husband died, and she married her brother-in-law afterwards,” Luiza answered.
“What! the one who stammered?”
“Yes; and they have a child who stammers also.”
“A family conversation in that house must be amusing! And Donna Eugenia, the wife of Braga?”
Here Julião, unable to endure his position any longer, rose.
“I am in a hurry,” he said in a choking voice, “and I can stay no longer. When you write to Jorge, remember me to him.”
He hardly bent his head to Bazilio. But when he looked for his hat he could not find it; it had rolled under a chair. He got entangled in the portière, he struck himself violently against the closed door, and went out at last, furious, his heart filled with hatred towards Luiza, Jorge, wealth, and life itself; and thinking too late of the ironical words, the apt retorts, with which he ought to have crushed that fool and that silly woman.