'A rival in each of you'
Read the full text in our reader
Mas vocês em breve vão vel-a, e eu e ella estaremos vingados; pois estou certo, que todos a uma voz a proclamarão uma divindade. Mas o peór é, que desde já posso contar com um rival em cada um de vocês.
But soon you shall see her, and she and I will be avenged; for I am certain that with one voice you will all proclaim her a divinity. But the worst is that from now on I can count on a rival in each one of you.
Álvaro's confidence is charming and, for the reader, chilling. He predicts that once his friends see 'Elvira' they will 'a uma voz a proclamarão uma divindade' — with one voice proclaim her a divinity — and he frets, half in jest, that each will become his 'rival'. He imagines the danger of her beauty entirely in the register of courtship: more admirers, more competition for her hand. He cannot conceive the real danger her being seen entails — that among the many eyes she will draw, one may someday be an eye that knows her, or a tongue that carries her description to Leôncio's agents. The beauty he is so eager to display is precisely the thing Isaura has spent the chapter hiding. His pride in her radiance is, unwittingly, the very impulse that most imperils her.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 10.54 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
A Escrava Isaura 10.54 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.54/