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By Root 2012 0

The scratching of his pen is the only sound in the night. The sea is inaudible tonight and the office of the owner and editor-in-chief, which is also lighted up, is silent, as though Epaminondas Gonçalves had fallen asleep at his desk. But when the nearsighted journalist has set down the last word of his article and swiftly crosses the large outer office and enters the office of the head of the Progressivist Republican Party, he finds him waiting for him with his eyes wide open. His elbows are resting on the desk and his hands are crossed. As he sees the journalist enter, his dark, angular face, whose features and bones are underscored by that inner energy that enables him to spend entire nights without a wink of sleep at political meetings and then work all the following day without the least sign of fatigue, relaxes, as if to say: “Well, at last.”

“Is it finished?” he murmurs.

“Finished.” The nearsighted journalist holds the sheaf of pages out to him. But Epaminondas Gonçalves does not take them.

“I’d rather you read them aloud to me,” he says. “If I hear them, I’ll have a better idea of how they turned out. Have a seat there, next to the light.”

As the journalist is about to begin to read, he is overcome by a sneeze, and then another, and finally a fit of them that forces him to remove his eyeglasses and cover his mouth and nose with an enormous handkerchief that he pulls out of his sleeve, like a sleight-of-hand artist.

“It’s this summer dampness,” he says apologetically, wiping his congested face.

“I know,” Epaminondas Gonçalves cuts him short. “Please read.”

[II]

A United Brazil, A Strong Nation

JORNAL DE NOTÍCIAS

(Owner: Epaminondas Gonçalves)

Bahia, January 3, 1897

The Defeat of Major Febrônio de Brito’s Expedition

in the Hinterland of Canudos

New Developments

THE PROGRESSIVIST REPUBLICAN PARTY ACCUSES THE GOVERNOR AND THE BAHIA AUTONOMIST PARTY OF CONSPIRING AGAINST THE REPUBLIC TO

RESTORE THE OUTMODED IMPERIAL ORDER

The corpse of the “English agent”

Commission of Republicans journeys to Rio to seek intervention of Federal Army to put down rebellion of subversive fanatics

TELEGRAM OF PATRIOTS OF BAHIA TO COLONEL MOREIRA CÉSAR: “SAVE THE REPUBLIC!”

The defeat of the military expedition under the command of Major Febrônio de Brito and composed of troops from the Ninth, Twenty-sixth, and Thirty-third Infantry Battalions, and the growing signs of complicity between the English Crown and the landowners of the State of Bahia known to have ties to the Autonomist cause and nostalgic leanings, on the one hand, and the fanatics of Canudos, on the other, resulted on Friday evening in yet another stormy session of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Bahia.

Through its President, the Honorable Deputy Dom Epaminondas Gonçalves, the Progressivist Republican Party formally accused the governor of the State of Bahia, the Honorable Dom Luiz Viana, and the groups traditionally affiliated with the Baron de Canabrava—the former Minister of the Empire and former Ambassador of the Emperor Dom Pedro II to the British Crown—of having fomented the uprising in Canudos and of having furnished the rebels arms, thanks to the aid of England, with the aim of bringing about the fall of the Republic and the restoration of the monarchy.

The Deputies of the Progressivist Republican Party demanded that the Federal Government intervene immediately in the State of Bahia in order to snuff out what the Honorable Deputy Dom Epaminondas Gonçalves called “a seditious plot on the part of native bluebloods and the greed of Albion aimed against the sovereignty of Brazil.” Moreover, it was announced that a Commission made up of prominent figures of Bahia had departed for Rio de Janeiro to make representations to President Prudente de Morais concerning the public hue and cry in Bahia for troops of the Federal Army to be sent to wipe out Antônio Conselheiro’s subversive movement.

The Progressivist Republicans reminded the Assembly that two weeks have now passed since the defeat of the Brito expedition by rebels vastly superior in