Pádua's first idea
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A primeira ideia do Padua, quando lhe saiu o premio,
Padua's first idea, when the prize came to him,
What the clerk dreamed of doing with the prize.
'A primeira ideia' — the first idea. The phrasing already contains its own correction: a first idea implies a second, wiser one is coming, and the reader leans in for the reversal. Machado stages the little drama of temptation in a single noun. Before the sensible outcome, we get the fantasy.
What a man reaches for first, given sudden money, is a shrewd index of his soul — the same principle by which José Dias's love of superlatives revealed him. Pádua's instinct will prove all appetite and vanity, a rush of purchases the narrator is about to enumerate with gentle relish. The structure of the sentence promises that his wife will overrule him, and she will. But first Machado lets the clerk dream out loud, because the dream is the character: what Pádua wants when nothing restrains him tells us more than anything he actually does.
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Dom Casmurro 16.7 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/16.7/