'The liberty he means to give'
Read the full text in our reader
E’ esta a liberdade que pretende dar áquella, que a mãe delle creou com tanto amor e carinho.
This is the liberty he means to give to her whom his mother raised with so much love and care.
Isaura turns Leôncio's grand word inside out. He kept promising 'liberdade'; here is the liberty — 'esta a liberdade', with a bitter gesture at the shackles. The sarcasm is aimed straight at the gap between his rhetoric and his iron. And she invokes, once more, the dead mistress who 'creou com tanto amor e carinho', raised her with love and care, so that the son's cruelty is measured against the mother's tenderness in the same sentence. The whole chapter has turned on this contrast between the two generations of the house; Isaura wields it now not as a plea, as she did with Leôncio, but as an accusation, spoken to the one person who will take her side.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 9.123 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
A Escrava Isaura 9.123 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/9.123/