Old habit and necessity
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Nelle era velho costume e necessidade.
In him it was old habit and necessity.
For Cosme, riding is neither vanity nor courtship.
Two nouns fix Cosme's riding in place: 'velho costume e necessidade.' No pleasure, no display, no courtship — only the groove of long practice and the plain need of a working man to get about. The phrase is affectionate but reductive, sanding away any romance from the figure on horseback.
Machado is fond of defining his minor characters by what they no longer are. Cosme rides as an old man rides, because he always has and because he must, and the word 'velho' quietly announces the theme of the passages to come: this is a portrait of energies that have cooled. The nephew's saddle points toward a future of love; the uncle's points only backward, to a settled and slightly weary life whose fires the coming lines will describe as long since gone out.
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