Never in the lecture halls
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Installado naquelle vasto pandemonium do luxo e dos prazeres, Leoncio raras vezes, e só por desfastio, ia ouvir as eloquentes prelecções dos eximios professores da época, e nem tão pouco era visto nos museos, institutos e bibliothecas.
Installed in that vast pandemonium of luxury and pleasures, Leôncio rarely, and only out of boredom, would go to hear the eloquent lectures of the day's eminent professors, nor was he even seen in the museums, institutes and libraries.
Installed in that vast pandemonium of luxury and pleasure, only rarely, and only to kill boredom, did Leôncio go to hear the eloquent lectures of the eminent professors of the day; nor was he ever seen in the museums, institutes and libraries.
The 'pure springs' of the last paragraph arrive as a 'pandemonium' — Milton's word, coined for the capital of Hell, laid over Paris. And the sentence works by everything Leôncio does not do: rarely at a lecture, and then only 'por desfastio', to kill boredom; never in a museum, an institute, a library. Guimarães builds him a second time out of absences, as he built the schoolboy out of the 'no' never said. The father's letter of credit is being spent, line by line, on precisely the opposite of what it was given for. The learning is a decor; the appetite is the whole man.
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