A celestial apparition
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E como se traja com tão elegante simplicidade! assim murmuravão entre si os tres cavalheiros como impressionados por uma apparição celeste.
And how she dresses, with such elegant simplicity! — thus the three gentlemen murmured among themselves, as if struck by a celestial apparition.
The final touch is the telling one: 'tão elegante simplicidade', so elegant a simplicity — for Isaura's dress is plain, her means slender, and yet the effect is elegance itself. It is the aristocracy of the person shining through the poverty of the circumstance, and it dazzles the men more than any finery could. The narrator caps the scene by calling her, in the men's eyes, 'uma apparição celeste', a celestial apparition — the deifying language complete. But 'apparição', an apparition, also means a thing that appears and may vanish, a vision that is not quite of this world and cannot stay. The word holds Isaura's whole predicament: she has appeared, brilliantly, where she cannot afford to be seen, and like an apparition she will have to disappear again. The men are enchanted by a vision; the reader knows visions do not survive daylight.
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