No, he was not stingy with it. True, it was only a little grease,
with which he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he
plastered it on like cement!

And as to the names of the capillary edifices--for the monuments
reared by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of
architecture--buckles, rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls,
corkscrews, curls, everything found there a place. Nothing false; no
towers, no chignons, no shams! These head were not enfeebled by
cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off, but were forests in all their
native virginity! Fragoso, however, was not above adding a few
natural flowers, two or three long fish-bones, and some fine bone or
copper ornaments, which were brought him by the dandies of the
district. Assuredly, the exquisites of the Directory would have
envied the arrangement of these high-art coiffures, three and four
stories high, and the great Leonard himself would have bowed before
his transatlantic rival.

And then the vatems, the handfuls of reis--the only coins for which
the natives of the Amazon exchange their goods--which rained into the
pocket of Fragoso, and which he collected with evident satisfaction.
But assuredly night would come before he could satisfy the demands of
the customers, who were so constantly renewed. It was not only the
population of Tabatinga which crowded to the door of the loja. The
news of the arrival of Fragoso was not slow to get abroad; natives
came to him from all sides: Ticunas from the left bank of the river,
Mayorunas from the right bank, as well as those who live on the
Cajuru and those who come from the villages of the Javary.

A long array of anxious ones formed itself in the square. The happy