Extremely ugly
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Dez annos de enamorado mal succedido consumira em Lisboa o bacharel provinciano. Para se fazer amar da formosa dama de D. Maria I minguavam-lhe dotes physicos: Domingos Botelho era extremamente feio. Para se inculcar como partido conveniente a uma filha segunda, faltavam-lhe bens de fortuna: os haveres d’elle não excediam a trinta mil cruzados em propriedades no Douro.
Ten years as an unlucky lover the provincial graduate had spent in Lisbon. To make himself loved by the beautiful lady-in-waiting of D. Maria I, he lacked physical gifts: Domingos Botelho was extremely ugly. To put himself forward as a suitable match for a second daughter, he lacked goods of fortune: his holdings did not exceed thirty thousand cruzados in estates on the Douro.
Now Camilo strips the varnish. The father is introduced by everything he was NOT: after ten years of failed courtship in Lisbon, he lacked the three things a suitor needs — looks, money, and wit. This passage lands the first two, each with a courtly build-up and a flat little verdict.
Camilo's comedy is architectural. Twice he raises a formal, courtly period — 'to make himself loved by the beautiful lady…', 'to put himself forward as a suitable match…' — and twice he drops it onto a colon and a blunt little fact: <em>era extremamente feio</em>; his money didn't top thirty thousand cruzados. The grand sentence and the small verdict: that gap is the joke, and it will become the book's whole method — high romantic feeling forever colliding with hard provincial fact. We are being taught, gently, that this is a world where love runs straight into looks, money, and rank, and usually loses.
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