[Here’s a passage from Ch. XI of “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated by Gregory Rabassa:]
From the age of five I’d earned the nickname of “Devil Child,” and I really was just that. I was one of the most malevolent children of my time, evasive, nosey, mischievous, and willful. For example, one day I split open the head of a slave because she’d refused to give me a spoonful of the cocoanut confection she was making and, not content with that evil deed, I threw a handful of ashes into the bowl and, not satisfied with that mischief, I ran to tell my mother that the slave was the one who’d ruined the dish out of spite. And I was only six years old. Prudêncio, a black houseboy, was my horse every day. He’d get down on his hands and knees, take a cord in his mouth as a bridle, and I’d climb onto his back with a switch in my hand. I would whip him, make him do a thousand turns, left and right, and he would obey—sometimes moaning—but he would obey without saying a word or, at most, an—“Ouch, little master!”—to which I would retort, “Shut your mouth, animal!” Hiding visitors’ hats, pinning paper tails on dignified people, pulling pigtails, pinching matrons on the arm, and many other deeds of that sort were the sign of a restive nature, but I have to believe that they were also the expressions of a robust spirit, because my father held me in great admiration, and if at times he scolded me in the presence of people, he did it as a mere formality. In private he would give me kisses.