Dom Casmurro 25.19 · 25.19

The forbidden picture is finally specified: Bento walking 'com o Padua na rua', publicly, where others can see. The street is the operative word — the objection is not to knowing Pádua but to being displayed beside him, the family's standing measured in who is seen with whom. José Dias keeps the whole matter on the surface of appearances, exactly where he is most persuasive.

And still it is Pádua who is named, never Capitú. The father is a permissible target, a lesser man in the street; the daughter, next door and much nearer to Bento's heart, stays out of the sentence entirely. Machado's irony works in the silence: José Dias means to keep Bento away from the whole household, but he can only gesture at the edge of it. The real object of his vigilance is precisely the person he cannot mention.

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