A new Humboldt
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Assim escreveo ao pae, que deo-lhe credito e o enviou a Paris, donde esperava vel-o voltar feito um novo Humboldt.
So he wrote to his father, who gave him credit and sent him to Paris, whence he hoped to see him return made a new Humboldt.
So he wrote to his father, who granted him credit and sent him to Paris — whence he hoped to see him return a new Humboldt.
The father funds the fiction with his eyes open and his heart soft: 'deo-lhe credito e o enviou a Paris' — gave him credit and shipped him off — dreaming he would come back 'um novo Humboldt', a new Humboldt, the age's very name for the universal scientist. It is the tenderest and most foolish sentence in the portrait, and it turns the old Commander into a minor tragic figure: a loving father buying his son's ruin by inches, unable to say no even across an ocean. Guimarães measures the whole distance of the fall in one proper noun — the father hopes for Humboldt; the boulevards will make a lion.
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