The stratagem
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Vali-me por fim de um ardil; fiz-lhes acreditar que aquelle modo de viver retrahido e sem contacto com a sociedade em um paiz, onde erão desconhecidos, já começava a dar que fallar ao publico e a attrahir suspeitas sobre elles, e que até a policia começava a olhal-os com desconfiança; mentiras, que não deixavão de ter sua plausibilidade...
I resorted at last to a ruse; I made them believe that their retiring way of life, without contact with society, in a country where they were unknown, was beginning to set people talking and to draw suspicion upon them, and that even the police were beginning to eye them with distrust; lies that were not without their plausibility...
Álvaro's 'ardil', his ruse, is the chapter's cruelest irony, and he tells it proudly, never suspecting its truth. To lure Isaura out of hiding, he invented a lie: that her very seclusion was drawing suspicion and police attention. And, as the narrator lets him confess, the lies 'não deixavão de ter sua plausibilidade' — were not without plausibility. They were, in fact, nearly true: the police really are hunting her, suspicion really would fall on her. Álvaro, to coax his beloved into the open, unknowingly used her actual danger as a fictional threat — and the fiction worked because it was almost the fact. He has drawn her into the ballroom by frightening her with the exact peril she is really in, and in doing so has done Leôncio's work for him: brought the hidden woman into a crowded room full of eyes. Love and menace have never been so cruelly confused.
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