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3
The Afterlife of Revolution
After the revolution, da Cunha was soon reintegrated into the ranks of the military and
reinductedintotheWarCollegeuntiltheendof1893,whenheleftasalieutenantcolonel.
During the first months of 1890, he constantly visited the home of the revolutionary hero
Solon Ribeiro to court his luscious daughter, Ana. Photos of Ana show a dark-haired girl
with an elegant profile, sensual mouth, wavy hair, and Rubenesque physique. At that age
she lacked the discernment to understand the precariousness of Euclides's military am-
bitions, and he, thoroughly inexperienced as well, had no insight into her either, as later
events would show. By September they were married.
Their domestic routine, encompassed by the military circle of family and profession,
remained roughly as it had been prior to their nuptials but with the frisson of family ten-
sion. Everywhere the discussions turned on politics of the Republic, which were prov-
ing to be as cravenly opportunistic as the politics of the Emperor had been. The spoils of
the empire were divvied up among those who placed themselves most propitiously, who
could most effectively work the lines of patronage of the Republic, and those, like da
Cunha,whosustainedtheauraofcommittedrepublicanism.SolonRibeiro,highlycritical
of an authoritarian government that held the reins of power more tightly than the mon-
archy and was at least as dedicated to patronage, soon caused domestic relations in the da
Cunhahouseholdtobecomemorestrained.EuclideshadthrowninhischitswithFloriano
Peixoto, while Ribeiro would resist Peixoto because of the latter's profoundly undemo-
cratic instincts, the nature of the coup that thrust him into power, and Peixoto's strategic
nurture of political fanatics.
Figure 3.1.
Ana Emilia Solon da Cunha, Euclides's wife.
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