Fonseca is where Fermina Daza’s long-distance courtship with Florentino Ariza becomes a practical commitment rather than a private exchange of hopes. During her stay there, she accepts their plan to marry without consulting anyone, asks her fiancé’s permission to attend her first adult dance, and remains at the dance until morning after recognizing his coded reply.

Setting and the courtship

While Fermina is in Fonseca, a cousin tells her that her father, Lorenzo Daza, has entertained the possibility of marrying her to Cleofás Moscote, the sole heir to a great fortune. Fermina knows Moscote by sight and recognizes his elegance, but measures him against her memory of Florentino—poor, gaunt, and seated beneath the almond trees with a book of verses. The proposed match does not unsettle her attachment to Florentino.

Hildebranda Sánchez’s visit to a fortuneteller prompts Fermina to consult the woman as well. The cards predict no obstacle to a long, happy marriage, restoring Fermina’s courage: she cannot imagine that future with anyone but Florentino. She takes charge of her fate, and their telegraphic correspondence grows more methodical and intense. They arrange dates and means, and pledge to marry as soon as they meet again, wherever and however they can, without seeking anyone’s consent.

The telegram and the dance

The commitment is binding enough that Fermina does not consider it proper to accept her father’s permission to attend her first adult dance in Fonseca without first consulting Florentino. He is at a transient hotel, playing cards with Lotario Thugut, when an urgent telegram summons him to the telegraph line. The Fonseca operator has relayed Fermina’s request through seven intermediate stations.

Fermina wants more than an affirmative answer: she asks for proof that Florentino is actually at the other end. He sends an identifying phrase, “Tell her that I swear by the crowned goddess.” Recognizing their password, she accepts the reply and stays at the dance until seven the next morning, changing in haste so she will not be late for Mass. The episode makes their private engagement visible in her conduct: by then, she has accumulated more letters and telegrams in her trunk than Lorenzo had confiscated, and has learned to behave with the reserve of a married woman.

Family life and the absent fiancé

Lorenzo reads the changes in his daughter’s manner as evidence that distance and time have cured her of youthful fantasies. He does not raise his own plans for an arranged marriage. Their relationship settles into a comfortable formality, sustained by the reserve Fermina established after the expulsion of Aunt Escolástica; to an observer, that arrangement could pass for affection. The contrast is central to Fonseca’s role in the courtship: while her father mistakes outward composure for surrender, Fermina is actively organizing a future with Florentino.

Florentino’s letters from this period also introduce a fantastic adventure. He tells Fermina of his determination to salvage the treasure of the sunken galleon, a story she already knows through Lorenzo’s failed efforts to interest German divers. Lorenzo abandoned those efforts after members of the Academy of History argued that the wreck was a fabricated legend, and Fermina knows the ship lies at a depth of two hundred meters, not the twenty Florentino claims. Accustomed to his poetic excesses, she initially enjoys the tale as one of his most successful inventions; when increasingly extravagant details continue to arrive, she confides to Hildebranda her fear that her dazzled sweetheart may have lost his mind. Fonseca thus holds together the courtship’s practical seriousness and the imaginative excess of the letters through which it is sustained.