Dom Casmurro 20.38 · 20.38

The boy searches for a loophole, and the language turns almost juridical: some "especie" of vow "mediante a intenção" — by intention alone — that would discharge the whole obligation without the labour of performing it. He wants a receipt without a payment, grace on credit of good faith.

Machado is glancing here at a real strand of casuist theology — the doctrine that intention can stand in for the deed — and letting a frightened child stumble into it out of pure convenience. It is funny, but it is also the seed of a lifelong evasiveness. Dom Casmurro is a man who will spend a book trying to make his intentions, his readings, his suspicions, count as proof, hoping that if he means a thing hard enough it will be so. The wish for a bargain "mediante a intenção" is the first appearance of a mind that prefers the intended fact to the demonstrated one.

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