Dom Casmurro 3.39 · 3.39

'A senhora não crê em taes calculos' — you don't believe in such calculations. He compliments her trustfulness, and the compliment is a needle: to be told you are too pure to imagine scheming is to be invited, ever so gently, to start imagining it. There is projection here too — the 'calculos', the cold reckoning he attributes to the Páduas, is exactly the reckoning he is performing in this very room. He accuses others of the art he is practicing on his listener.

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