Not leaving the vague wish
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Assim, para não sair do desejo vago
So, in order not to depart from the vague wish
He begins the illustrative fable, taking his own case as the example.
The narrator moves from maxim to fable, and the example he reaches for is himself. The 'desejo vago' is the family's half-formed plan to send Bento abroad — the very shadow of the seminary threat that shapes his whole youth. He casts it deliberately as vague, unfixed, to show how Capitú would have handled even so shapeless a danger.
The undercurrent is Capitú's respect for the given terms. She would not overturn the wish; she would work within it, 'para não sair' of it. This is characteristic of her method as the narrator draws it — never open confrontation, always accommodation that quietly redirects. Where Bento imagines resistance as refusal, Capitú imagines it as a subtler compliance. The fable of the canoes, about to unfold, is built entirely on this principle of getting one's way without ever seeming to defy the wish that stands in the road.
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