A Escrava Isaura 9.72 · 9.72

Leôncio scoffs at the very word — 'quem falla aqui em affectos?' — as though feeling were an impertinence in a slave, a category error. His mockery gives the game away: he cannot argue with her claim, so he ridicules that she should make it. 'Podes acaso dispor delles?' — can you even dispose of them? — turns her own logic against her with cruel neatness, since a slave, by definition, disposes of nothing, not her time, her body, nor her children. But Isaura has an answer ready, and it is the finest line of the exchange: the heart is the one possession that no owner, not even its own, can command.

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