The windows packed
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a rua cheia de gente, as janellas atopetadas,
the street full of people, the windows packed,
The whole street turns out for the departing sovereign.
The crowd swells beyond the household to the whole street: 'a rua cheia de gente, as janellas atopetadas.' 'Atopetadas' — crammed to the brim — is a vivid, slightly comic word for windows stuffed with onlookers, and it turns the Santiagos' quiet lane in Matacavallos into the route of a state procession.
The scale is the daydream's flattery working at full pitch. What began as a private plea in a parlour has become a public spectacle, the neighbourhood pouring out to watch. And the true object of all this attention is not really the Emperor but Bentinho, the boy whose fortune has just been decided; the packed windows are there to have witnessed his deliverance. Machado catches the way a child's imagination inflates a wish until the entire visible world is arranged around it, every face turned toward the house where the miracle occurred.
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Dom Casmurro 29.49 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/29.49/