Reading Note: The Maias
I’m already looking forward to reading The Maias a second time. Of course, I shall have to read all of it a first time before that can happen. It seems I’ve been reading Eça de Queirós’s 1888 novel for months. It hasn’t been for want of interest! It’s an enchanted novel, quite literally illuminated by glowworms of reminiscence: The Tale of Genji, Un amour de Swann, La Traviata, and, most of all, The Leopard. These reminiscences are mine, not the author’s — in most cases, they couldn’t be — but they seem to belong to the novel, as if it were a long-packed-away gown whose folds were freshly scented with bygone perfumes.
In the following exchange, which ends Chapter XII, Carlos da Maia, the paragon-hero, discusses his plan to elope with the wife of one Senhor Castro Gomes.
   “What’s he like as a man?” asked Ega.
   “A dark, elegant-looking Brazilian, flashy, the kind of foreigner you’d find in the Café de la Paix. When this all happens, he may well feel a touch of wounded vanity, but his is the kind of heart that will find easy consolation at the Folies Bergères.”
   Ega said nothing, but he thought that a clubbable man like that — even one capable of finding consolation at the Folies Bergères” — while he might not care much about his wife, might still love his daughter very much indeed. Then another idea occurred to him and he said:
   “What about your grandfather?”
   Carlos shrugged.
   “For me to be profoundly happy, my grandfather will have to suffer a little, just as I would have had to be wretched for the rest of my life if I wanted to spare him this unhappiness. That is how the world is, Ega. On this point, I’m not prepared to make sacrifices.”
   Ega slowly rubbed his hands together, staring down at the floor and repeating the same word, the only one that came to mind in the fact of such vehemence.
   “Extraordinary!”