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The nearsighted journalist thrust his head forward. The two of them were sitting face to face in the leather armchairs, separated by a little table with a pitcher full of papaya-and-banana punch on it. The morning was going by quickly; the light that beat down on the garden was already a noon light. Cries of peddlers hawking food, parrots, prayers, services came over the tops of the walls.

“This part of the story can be explained,” the man with loose-hinged limbs said in his piercing voice. “What happened in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo, is logical and rational.”

“Logical and rational that the mob should pour out into the streets to destroy newspaper offices, to attack private houses, to murder people unable to point out on a map where Canudos is located, because a handful of fanatics thousands of kilometers away defeated an expeditionary force? That’s logical and rational?”

“They were roused to a frenzy by propaganda,” the nearsighted journalist insisted. “You haven’t read the papers, Baron.”

“I learned what happened in Rio from one of the victims,” the latter replied. “He came within a hair’s breadth of being killed himself.”

The baron had met the Viscount de Ouro Preto in London. He had spent an entire afternoon with the former monarchist leader, who had taken refuge in Portugal after hurriedly fleeing from Brazil following the terrifying uprisings that had taken place in Rio de Janeiro when the news of the rout of the Seventh Regiment and the death of Moreira César had reached the city. Incredulous, dumfounded, frightened out of his wits, the elderly ex-dignitary had witnessed, from the balconies of the town house of the Baroness de Guanabara, where he had chanced to pay a call, a crowd of demonstrators parade down the Rua Marquês from the Military Club, carrying posters calling for his head as the person responsible for the defeat of the Republic at Canudos. Shortly thereafter, a messenger had come to inform him that his house had been sacked, along with those of other well-known monarchists, and that the offices of A Gazeta de Notícias and A Liberdade were burning down.

“The English spy at Ipupiará. The rifles being sent to Canudos that were discovered in the backlands. The Kropatchek projectiles used by the jagunços that could only have been brought by British ships. And the explosive bullets. The lies that have been harped on night and day have turned into truths.”

“You are overestimating the audience of the Jornal de Notícias.” The Baron de Canabrava smiled.

“The Epaminondas Gonçalves of Rio de Janeiro is named Alcindo Guanabara and his daily A República,” the nearsighted journalist stated. “Since Major Febrônio’s defeat, A República hasn’t let a single day go by without presenting conclusive evidence of the complicity between the Monarchist Party and Canudos.”

The baron barely heard him, for he was hearing in his mind what the Viscount de Ouro Prêto, wrapped in a blanket that barely left his mouth free, had told him: “What’s pathetic is that we never took Gentil de Castro seriously. He was a nobody in the days of the Empire. He never was awarded a title, an honor, an official post. His monarchism was purely sentimental; it had nothing to do with reality.”

“The conclusive evidence, for example, with regard to the cattle and arms in Sete Lagoas, in the state of Minas Gerais,” the nearsighted journalist went on to say. “Weren’t they being sent to Canudos? Weren’t they being convoyed there by Manuel João Brandão, the known leader of thugs in the hire of monarchist caudilhos? Hadn’t Brandão been in the service of Joaquim Nabuco, of the Viscount de Ouro Preto? Alcindo gives the names of the police who arrested Brandão, prints word for word his statements confessing everything. What does it matter if Brandão never existed and such a consignment of arms was never discovered? It appeared in print, so it was true. The story of the spy of Ipupiará all over again, blown up to even greater proportions. Do you see how logical, how rational all that is? You weren