How he found the enchanted grotto
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E’ celebre! retorquio o doutor mas como chegaste a descobrir essa nympha encantada, e a ter entrada em sua gruta mysteriosa?
Remarkable! retorted the doctor — but how did you come to discover that enchanted nymph, and to gain entry to her mysterious grotto?
Geraldo plays along with the fairy-tale vocabulary — 'nympha encantada', 'gruta mysteriosa' — but the question underneath is the practical one that keeps recurring: how did you get in? The word 'descobrir', to discover, hangs with a double edge; the whole plot turns on discovery, on who will find out what Elvira really is. Here it is only Álvaro's happy discovery of a beautiful neighbour, but the verb points ahead to the graver discovery that threatens her. Geraldo's teasing draws out the story Álvaro is longing to tell, and the next passage opens the chapter's only sustained narrative, the tale of how a dropped handkerchief let a young man into a fugitive's garden — a small romance that will decide a life.
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A Escrava Isaura 10.19 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.19/