A vessel in his hands
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És propriedade minha; um vaso, que tenho entre as minhas mãos, e que posso usar delle ou despedaçal-o a meo sabor.
You are my property; a vessel I hold in my hands, that I may use or shatter as I please.
The threat reaches its coldest formulation: Isaura is a 'vaso' — a vessel, an earthen thing — that he may 'usar' or 'despedaçal-o', use or smash, 'a meo sabor', at his whim. The image is deliberately dehumanizing, and Guimarães means it to be unbearable. There is a grim echo of scripture here — the potter and the clay, the vessel in the maker's hand — but where scripture reserves that power to God, Leôncio arrogates it to himself over a fellow creature. The 'right' he keeps invoking has curdled into the naked claim to destroy. It is the logic of slavery stated without disguise, and it is the low point from which the chapter's rescue will lift.
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