Dom Casmurro 29.47 · 29.47

Now the fantasy turns from speech to spectacle. The Emperor extends his hand to be kissed — the ritual gesture of the sovereign — and the daydream lingers over the ceremony with a child's delight in pomp. 'Outra vez,' once more, tells us the hand was kissed on arrival too; the whole visit is framed in this act of homage.

Machado renders the scene in the imperfect tense — dava, saía, entrava, fazia — the tense of habit and reverie, as if the vision were replaying itself, softly, more than once. The grammar itself signals that we are inside imagination, where events do not happen sharply but drift and recur. After the argument is won, what Bentinho's mind reaches for is not the practical future of medical study but the glory of the moment: the kissed hand, the deference, the sense of having been singled out by the greatest man alive.

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