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It happened two days before he was due to sail, as dusk was falling. Jan van Rijsted came into the garret, with his late-afternoon pipe in his hand, to tell him that two persons were downstairs asking for him. “They’re capangas,” he warned him. Galileo knew that that was what men whom the powerful and the authorities used for underhanded business were called, and as a matter of fact the two of them did have a sinister look about them. But they were not armed and their manner toward him was respectful: there was someone who wanted to see him. Might he ask who? No. He was intrigued, and went along with them. They took him to the Praça da Basílica Cathedral first, through the upper town and after that through the lower one, and then through the outskirts. As they left paved streets behind in the darkness—the Rua Conselheiro Dantas, the Rua Portugal, the Rua das Princesas—and the markets of Santa Barbara and São João and turned into the carriageway that ran along the seafront to Barra, Galileo Gall wondered if the authorities hadn’t decided to murder him instead of expelling him from the country. But it was not a trap. At an inn lighted by a little kerosene lamp, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Jornal de Notícias was waiting for him.

Epaminondas Gonçalves held out his hand to him and asked him to sit down. He came straight to the point. “Do you want to stay in Brazil despite the order of expulsion?”

Galileo merely looked at him, without answering.

“Are you genuinely enthusiastic about what’s going on up there in Canudos?” Epaminondas Gonçalves asked. They were alone in the room, and outside, the capangas could be heard talking together and waves steadily rolling in. The leader of the Progressivist Republican Party was watching him intently, with a very serious expression on his face, and nervously tapping his heels. He was dressed in the gray suit that Galileo had seen him wearing in his office at the Jornal de Notícias, but his face did not have the same nonchalant, slyly mocking look on it that it had had that day. He was tense, with a furrowed brow that made his youthful face look older.

“I don’t like mysteries,” Gall said. “You’d best explain to me what this is all about.”

“I’m trying to find out whether you want to go to Canudos to take arms to the rebels.”

Galileo waited for a moment, not saying a word, looking the other man straight in the eye.

“Two days ago you had no sympathy for the rebels,” he slowly commented. “Occupying other people’s land and living in promiscuity struck you as animal behavior.”

“That is the opinion of the Progressivist Republican Party,” Epaminondas Gonçalves agreed. “And my own as well, naturally.”

“But…” Gall said, helping him along, thrusting his head slightly forward.

“But the enemies of our enemies are our friends,” Epaminondas Gonçalves declared, ceasing to tap his heels. “Bahia is a bulwark of retrograde landowners, whose hearts still lie with the monarchy, despite the fact that we’ve been a republic for eight years. If it is necessary to aid the bandits and the Sebastianists in the interior in order to put an end to the Baron de Canabrava’s dictatorial rule over Bahia, I shall do so. We’re falling farther and farther behind and becoming poorer and poorer. These people must be removed from power, at whatever cost, before it’s too late. If that business in Canudos continues, Luiz Viana’s government will be plunged into crisis and sooner or later the federal forces will step in. And the moment that Rio de Janeiro intervenes, Bahia will cease to be the fief of the Autonomists.”

“And the reign of the Progressivist Republicans will begin,” Gall murmured.

“We don’t believe in kings. We’re republicans to the very marrow of our bones,” Epaminondas Gonçalves corrected him. “Well, well, I see you understand me.”

“I understand that part all right,” Galileo said. “But not the rest of it. If the Progressivist Republican Party wants to arm the jagunços, why through me?”

“The Progressivist Republican Party does not wish to aid or to have