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    Coimbra the Clerk
    Coimbra the Clerk
    Coimbra the Clerk
    Ebook23 pages18 minutes

    Coimbra the Clerk

    By Machado de Assis

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    About this ebook

    The aging clerk Coimbra no longer believes in much. Not even his long-standing faith in the lottery--"I'm no longer of the age to hope," he admits--is entirely steadfast. He resolves, then, to buy one last ticket, for the drawing for the huge sum of five hundred contos.

    Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuen
    Genre: short story
    Length: 5,000 words

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFario
    Release dateSep 4, 2013
    ISBN9781301658824
    Coimbra the Clerk
    Author

    Machado de Assis

    Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Rio de Janeiro, 21 de junho de 1839 Rio de Janeiro, 29 de setembro de 1908) foi um escritor brasileiro, considerado por muitos críticos, estudiosos, escritores e leitores o maior nome da literatura brasileira.

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      Book preview

      Coimbra the Clerk - Machado de Assis

      Coimbra the Clerk

      Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

      Translated by Juan LePuen

      First published as O Escrivão Coimbra in Almanaque Brasileiro Garnier, 1906

      English translation copyright 2013 Juan LePuen and Fario

      Published at Smashwords by Juan LePuen and Fario

      Contents

      Coimbra the Clerk

      Translator’s Notes

      More from Fario

      Coimbra the Clerk

      There are seemingly few sights so sad as an old man buying a lottery ticket. If you think it over, it’s cheerful; that persistence of belief, when everything encourages disbelief, shows that the person is still strong and youthful. That the days go by and that, with them, the tickets come up empty matters little; the old man puts his fingers out to choose the number meant to deliver the prize the next day, or the day after—well, one day anyway, because in this world everything can go wrong, apart from a prize for the person who buys a lottery ticket with faith.

      It wasn’t faith that Coimbra the clerk was lacking. Nor was it hope. One thing never goes without the other. Don’t confuse faith in luck with religious faith. In his youth and in his maturity he had also had religious faith, even founding a confraternity, the confraternity of Saint Bernard, who was his namesake saint; but at fifty, with the effect of time or of reading, he found himself an unbeliever. He didn’t immediately leave the confraternity; his wife managed to keep him in

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