'Three distinct entities'
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Caspite! exclamou o Dr. Geraldo; fada! anjo! deosa!... são portanto tres entidades distinctas, mas por fim de contas verás que não passa de uma mulher verdadeira.
Good heavens! exclaimed Dr. Geraldo; a fairy! an angel! a goddess!... three distinct entities, then, but in the end you will see she is nothing more than a real woman.
Dr. Geraldo is Álvaro's foil, the sceptic to his enthusiast, and his joke about 'tres entidades distinctas' pokes fun at the theology of the Trinity — three distinct entities in one — to deflate his friend's rapture. Where Álvaro idealizes, Geraldo insists on 'uma mulher verdadeira', a real woman, flesh and history and all. His worldly realism is not cruelty; it is the reader's own suspicion voiced, and it sets up the chapter's central irony. Geraldo, precisely because he will not accept the fairy-tale, keeps asking the dangerous practical questions — where she came from, who her family is — and it is his sceptical curiosity, not Álvaro's love, that circles nearest the secret. The doubter is the one who may undo her.
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