Listen and be quiet. Everything in our lives coincides. The saint and I have spent a portion of our time in pleasures and heresy, because I consider heresy everything that isn’t my doctrine of Humanitas. We’ve both stolen things, he, as a boy, some pears in Carthage, I, a young man already, a watch from my friend Brás Cubas. Our mothers were religious and virtuous. In short, he thought as I do that everything that exists is good and he demonstrates why in Chapter XVI, Book VII, of his Confessions, with the difference that for him evil is a deviation of the will, a natural illusion of a backward century, a concession to error on Augustine’s part, since evil doesn’t even exist, and only his first affirmation is true. All things are good, omnia bona, and goodbye.

Goodbye, ignoramus. Don’t tell anyone what I have just entrusted to you if you don’t want to lose your ears. Be silent, be on guard, and thank your good fortune for having a great man like me for a friend, even if you don’t understand me. You will understand me. As soon as I return to Barbacena I’m going to give you, in simple, explicit terms, suitable for the understanding of a jackass, the true notions of a great man. Goodbye. Remember me to my poor Quincas Borba. Don’t forget to give him milk, milk and baths. Goodbye, goodbye … Yours from the bottom of my heart,

QUINCAS BORBA

Rubião could barely hold the paper in his hands. After a few seconds he sensed that it might be one of his friend’s japes, and he reread the letter. But the second reading confirmed his first impression. There was no doubt about it, he was crazy. Poor Quincas Borba! So his odd ways, his frequent changes of mood, his meaningless drive, his disproportionate acts of tenderness were nothing but the foretoken of the total ruin of his brain. He was dying before he died. So good! So jolly! He had his impertinences, to be sure, but they were explained by his illness. Rubião wiped his eyes, moist with feeling. Then the thought of the possible legacy came to him, and he was all the more afflicted as he was shown what a good friend he was going to lose.

He tried to read the letter one more time still, slowly now, analyzing the words, breaking them up to catch the meaning better and really to discover if it was the banter of a philosopher. That way of disconcerting a person by playing was well known, but everything else confirmed the suspicions of disaster. Almost at the end now, he stopped, his heart pierced. Might it not be that with the insanity of the testator proven the will would be null and void and the inheritance lost? Rubião had a dizzy spell. He still had the open letter in his hands when he saw the doctor appear in search of news of his patient. The postman had told him that a letter had arrived. Was that it?

“This is it, but…”

“Is it some private message … ?”

“Precisely, it has a private message, very private. Personal matters.