'By fair means or foul'
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e nada mais tinha a fazer do que mandal-a trazer á sua presença por bem ou por mal.
and had nothing more to do than to have her brought before him by fair means or foul.
The objection is completed with brutal clarity: he could simply have had her 'trazer á sua presença por bem ou por mal' — brought before him by fair means or foul. The idiom 'por bem ou por mal,' willingly or by force, states the whole condition of the enslaved in five words: a person who can be fetched by force is a person with no refuge in law. The narrator lets the ugliness stand undisguised before turning to explain why Leôncio, even so, hesitates.
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