Montesian transcripts: Alfonso's hope for power

Set directly against the lawyer, Alfonso is the transcript's single-entendre speaker — accented, unembarrassed, earnest, the recovery-house cousin of Marathe. He asks his question straight, risks a sincere hope out loud ("I am now hope for power"), and the form treats him with none of the irony it lets the attorney impale himself on: no punchline, no deflating cut. The contrast is the whole point — the man with the unassailable argument gets nowhere, and the man with the naked, grammatically broken sincerity is the one actually reaching for the thing that works. The book quietly weights the scale toward the earnest voice it declines to mock.