Balanced and lucid, my friend
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fiquemos em que a minha amiga, apezar do equilibrada e lucida,
let us settle that my friend, despite being balanced and lucid,
He grants Capitú her poise, then sets up the exception.
He turns from himself to Capitú, and the terms he chooses are weighty: 'equilibrada e lucida' — balanced and clear-sighted. These are the very qualities that make her formidable throughout the novel, the steadiness and quickness that so often outstrip Bento's own. Calling her 'a minha amiga' keeps the tenderness of childhood over the portrait even as the retrospective narrator, decades embittered, lets the praise stand.
The construction 'apezar do' — despite — announces a coming exception. Machado builds the sentence so that we feel a small contradiction approaching: someone this poised is about to be caught in something she cannot control. It is a delicate way to humanize her. Perfect self-command with one crack in it is far more real, and more moving, than perfection; and the crack, when it comes, is only a childhood love of sweets.
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