Chance came to his aid
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Esgotei em fim os estratagemas possiveis para ter entrada no sanctuario daquella deosa; mas foi tudo baldado. O acaso em fim veio em meo socorro, e servio-me melhor do que toda a minha habilidade e diligencia.
I exhausted at last every possible stratagem to gain entry to that goddess's sanctuary; but it was all in vain. Chance at last came to my aid, and served me better than all my skill and diligence.
The religious metaphor sharpens: her house is a 'sanctuario', a sanctuary, and she its 'deosa', its goddess — Álvaro's worship cast as a devotee's siege of a shrine he cannot enter. All his 'estratagemas', his contrivances, fail; and then 'o acaso... veio em meo socorro', chance came to his rescue. The word 'socorro', aid or rescue, quietly rhymes with Isaura's own prayers of Cap IX, where she begged heaven to 'soccorrei-me'. Here chance rescues the suitor into her presence, an ironic inversion — the same providence-or-accident that saved Isaura from Leôncio now delivers her, unasked, into a stranger's notice. Guimarães lets 'acaso' do the work a benevolent fate does in romance, while leaving open, as ever, whether it is chance or design.
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