His mother first to the hand
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minha mãe era a primeira que lhe beijava a mão.
my mother the first to kiss his hand.
Dona Glória leads the homage, kissing the imperial hand.
The hand Bento kissed in tears is now kissed by Dona Glória, and she is 'a primeira' — foremost in reverence, as she is foremost in the boy's whole world. The gesture rhymes deliberately with his own earlier kiss, binding mother and son in a single act of homage to the power that will settle their dispute.
But the placement is pointed. In the dream Dona Glória bows to an authority higher than her own promise to God — the one force imagined capable of releasing her from the vow that sends Bento to the seminary. The boy cannot argue his mother out of her piety, so he dreams up a sovereign she must, by the etiquette of the age, defer to first of all. Her lowered head before the Emperor is the submission he cannot win by any other means.
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Dom Casmurro 29.23 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/29.23/