The Moment.
Lima Barreto.
From Coisas do Reino do Jambon.
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2015.

I always was against the republic. I had seven years of age and came from primary college[1], of the great college of which I always remember with tenderness and filled with longing of my good teacher, Dona Teresa Pimentel do Amaral, when they told me that it had been proclaimed the republic.

I did not have in those times other cogitations which were not the one of glory, the one of the great, immense glory, made by myself without favour, nor misericorde, and saw that the such republic, which had been made, spread through the streets packed[2] soldiers, of carabines in funeral.

Never again I esteemed it, never again I wanted it.

Without being monarchist, I do not love the republic.

João Ribeiro told me, certain time, that the republic was the brown culture; well I am like the Mister João Ribeiro; there were never years in Brazil in which the dark, the cursed of mr. Haeckel, were put more to margin.

Our present regimen is of the most brutal plutocracy, it is of the most intense adulation to the strange elements, to the international capitalists, to the business agents, to the tainted charlatans with a wisdom of inferior article[3].

There is not between the rich, between the powerful, no generosity; there is no piety, there is no will, on their part, wish of attenuating their happiness, which is always an injustice, with the protection of the others, with the support to the needful, with the religious fervour of doing good.

They are afraid of being generous, they are afraid of giving an alms, they are afraid of being good.

If the dissolution of customs which all announce as existent, exists, before it existed the dissolution of the feeling, of the unfading feeling of solidarity between the men.

I, more than twenty years ago, saw the implantation of the regimen. I saw it with distaste and I believe I had reason.

Tr. Notes:

[1] colégio, school, college, etc..
[2] embalados, packed, etc..
[3] pacotilha.

Cf. http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/Default.aspx , norma brasileira.
Cf. Houaiss, Avery, Barsa.