A Escrava Isaura 10.66 · 10.66

Álvaro supplies the true, prosaic explanation — they are poor, and society 'impõe duros sacrificios ás pessoas desfavorecidas da fortuna', imposes hard sacrifices on those without money. It is a genuine social insight and, characteristically, half-right: their poverty is real, and the expense and exposure of society-life is indeed a burden the poor must dodge. But it is a cover story that happens to be true, the safest kind, and Álvaro believes it wholly. His democratic sympathy for the 'desfavorecidos da fortuna' is the same instinct that will make him, later, an ally of the enslaved; here it lets him defend Isaura with the one explanation that is both plausible and kind. He breaks off — 'e elles...' — on the verge of saying more, and the sentence is completed not by words but by her appearance, as the reader and the room look up to see her.

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