A Escrava Isaura 10.68 · 10.68

The long-awaited entrance is given in the flat, external voice of a stranger's eye — 'uma joven e formosa dama pelo braço de um homem de idade madura' — as if we too were seeing them for the first time. Guimarády withholds the names, letting us watch Isaura and Miguel arrive as the ballroom sees them: an elegant young lady and a dignified older gentleman. The disguise, in this moment, is perfect. The old escaped-and-hunted overseer appears as a man 'de respeitavel presença', of respectable bearing; the fugitive slave, as a lady on his arm. Everything about them reads as respectability itself. The pathos is in that very success: they have become, to the eye, exactly what they are pretending to be, and the reader alone carries the knowledge of the fear and the flight beneath the graceful entrance.

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