A Escrava Isaura 7.253 · 7.253

The chapter ends on the word that has been gathering behind all its comedy and cruelty: 'supplicio' — torment, ordeal, the agony of the condemned. Isaura recognizes, in the master's soft voice, the beginning of the real trial the whole chapter has approached: not Rosa's taunts or André's pawing, which she could repel, but Leôncio, against whom she has no defence. 'É chegada a hora do supplicio,' the hour of my ordeal has come — and on that suspended threshold, with the predator at her side and the door closed, Guimarães drops the curtain, leaving the reader in the dread he has so carefully built.

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