'A beetle, not a beauty-spot'
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mas o della, se bem reparei, é grande de mais; não parece uma mosca, mas sim um besouro, que lhe pousou na face.
but hers, if I saw rightly, is too big; it doesn't look like a beauty-fly, but rather like a beetle that has landed on her cheek.
The demolition arrives, and it is grotesque and funny at once: Isaura's mark is 'grande de mais', too big, not a dainty 'mosca' — the little patch or beauty-fly ladies once wore — but 'um besouro', a beetle, that has landed on her face. The insult is vivid, absurd, and cruel, the extremity of envy reaching for the most deflating image it can find. And yet it does the author's quiet work once more: it makes the mark large, distinct, unmistakable — 'grande de mais' — the very qualities that would make it a reliable point of identification. The ladies, straining to diminish Isaura, unwittingly testify that her beauty-spot is prominent enough to be seen and named across a ballroom. Guimarády lets malice describe the mark as precisely as a police notice would: large, dark, on the right cheek, impossible to miss. The comedy and the coming catastrophe are built from the same detail.
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