'I cannot understand you'
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Perdão, senhor; eu não posso comprehendel-o; diz-me que sou livre, e não permite que eu vá para onde quizer, e nem ao menos que eu disponha livremente de meu coração?!
Forgive me, sir; I cannot understand you: you tell me I am free, and do not allow me to go where I wish, nor even to dispose freely of my heart.
Isaura answers the grand speech not with defiance but with logic, and it is sharper than any refusal. 'Diz-me que sou livre, e não permite que eu vá para onde quizer' — you call me free, and will not let me go where I please, nor dispose of my own heart. She has found the seam in his rhetoric: a freedom that cannot move and cannot love is a contradiction in terms, and she simply names it. The last word is 'coração' — the heart he claims to be pouring out is the very thing he denies her the right to own. Guimarães gives the enslaved woman the clearest head in the room.
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