A child to a grown man
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e, francamente, improprias de um creançola para um homem maduro.
and, frankly, improper from a child to a grown man.
He fears the tone is unbecoming from a boy to an elder.
The objection sharpens into a matter of station. The curtness would be 'impropria de um creançola para um homem maduro' — unbecoming from a child addressing a grown man. Bento suddenly feels the age gap: he is a 'creançola,' a mere child, and José Dias a mature adult, and the imperious 'escolha o logar e diga-me' presumes an authority the boy does not have. The word 'creançola,' with its diminutive belittling, is how Bento measures himself against the man he means to command.
The self-awareness is real but incomplete. He worries about propriety, about giving offence, precisely because he is trying to manage a superior into serving him — and manners are the tool of the weak who must persuade the strong. The irony deepens when we remember the chapter's close, where the same boy reassures himself that José Dias is 'a simple aggregado' he can use. The child oscillates between deference and command, unsure which mask will move the man.
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