A Escrava Isaura 9.49 · 9.49

A single word, and a staggering irony: 'Profanação!' — to price Isaura's freedom is, he cries, a desecration of the sacred. The blasphemy is his own. It is Leôncio, not the ransom, who profanes her — who would defile by force the very perfection he calls holy. The novel lets him pronounce the exact word for his own intended crime, and be deaf to it. His reverence is the mask of his violation.

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