nor the other Virtues
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nem a eterna Bondade, nem as demais Virtudes eternas.
nor eternal Goodness, nor all the other eternal Virtues.
The catalogue of dethroned absolutes completes itself.
The list rolls on — Goodness, and after her the whole company of eternal Virtues, all outweighed. Machado marshals the personified abstractions in a little procession only to send them to the back of the line. The repeated 'nem... nem' beats out the demotion like a litany turned upside down.
The humor is real, but so is the theology being teased. Bento was raised for the priesthood; these capitalized Virtues are the furniture of the seminary he is bound for. That the first tremor of earthly love should so easily outrank eternal Goodness quietly names the conflict the coming chapters will dramatize — the vocation his mother promised God against the girl next door. Here, in one giddy sentence, the girl wins without a contest, and the eternal Virtues do not even get a hearing.
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