A Escrava Isaura 3.34 · 3.34

Here is how the trap is really built, and it is more insidious than a flat refusal. The old Commander did not deny Isaura's father — he 'cedeo', appeared to yield — but named 'tão exorbitante somma', so exorbitant a price, that the poor man can never pay it. The cruelty wears the mask of consent: on paper the father may buy his daughter's freedom; in fact the sum is set beyond any labourer's reach, so the willingness is a fiction and the blame appears to fall on the empty purse rather than the owner's will. And Leôncio inherits the trick with satisfaction: 'julgo nada dever recear por esse lado', I reckon there's nothing to fear from that quarter. He is doing a threat-assessment of Isaura's own father's love — filing it under dangers safely neutralized. Every legal road to her freedom has been quietly walled off, and he surveys the walls with the calm of a man counting his securities.

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