Solid moral qualities
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de qualidades moraes sólidas.
of solid moral qualities.
The compliment closes on the boy's supposed firm virtues.
The sentence lands on 'qualidades moraes sólidas' — solid moral qualities — and the adjective 'sólidas' is the finishing touch of a practiced flatterer, promising not just virtue but virtue that will last. It is the most confident claim of the whole speech and, in this novel, the most loaded.
Machado places these words in the mouth of José Dias but preserves them in the memory of Dom Casmurro, the jealous, secretive old man the boy became. 'Solid moral qualities' is exactly what the narrator's later life will call into question, as he tries and fails to master his own suspicion, and as generations of readers try to judge whether he was right about Capitú. The compliment predicts a firmness of character the man never quite shows. Reported here with a straight face, it becomes one of the novel's quiet, devastating ironies — praise that time will refuse to confirm.
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Dom Casmurro 24.19 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/24.19/