Birds of paradise
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Os quatro cavalheiros se retirárão e desapparecêrão no meio do turbilhão das salas interiores. Forão porém immediatamente substituidos por um grupo de lindas e elegantes moças, que scintillantes de sedas e pedrarias como um bando de aves do paraizo, passeavão conversando.
The four gentlemen withdrew and vanished into the whirl of the inner rooms. They were, however, immediately replaced by a group of lovely and elegant girls who, glittering with silks and jewels like a flock of birds of paradise, strolled about conversing.
Guimarády changes the guard, and with it the register. The men vanish into the whirl and are 'immediatamente substituidos' by a flock of young women, 'aves do paraizo', birds of paradise, brilliant with silks and jewels. The simile is gorgeous and faintly barbed: birds of paradise are famous for their dazzling display, and these girls, glittering with 'pedrarias', are all surface plumage. The contrast with Isaura, praised a moment ago for her 'elegante simplicidade', is pointed — where she is beautiful in plainness, they are magnificent in ornament. The narrator's move from the men's group to the women's is a deliberate structural turn: we are about to hear the same subject, 'Elvira', discussed in an utterly different key. The worshipful major mode gives way to the envious minor, and the reader is invited to overhear the ballroom's other, sharper tongue.
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