Dom Casmurro 29.19 · 29.19

The dream now widens from the family to the street, and Machado gives us the neighborhood as a chorus — the anonymous collective whose murmuring the next lines will quote. 'Alvoroço' catches the delicious scandal of it: not alarm but the buzzing thrill of the unheard-of, a whole quarter set talking.

The colon opens onto reported speech, and the effect is theatrical: Bento's private vindication is amplified into neighborhood legend. This is the social dimension of the wish. It is not enough that the Emperor favor him; the world must see and marvel. The child's imagination reaches for the full apparatus of reputation — the same reputation that, in the waking novel, will later turn against Capitú in the form of whispers and knowing looks. Here the collective voice is friendly, awed, entirely on the family's side.

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