and not recollecting by which clue of a path I could get out of it, I
remained at least half-an-hour deliberating which way to turn myself.
The sheds and enclosures I have mentioned were put together with care
and even nicety, it is true, but seemed to have no other inhabitants
than flocks of bantams, strutting about and destroying the eggs and
hopes of many an insect family. These glistening fowls, like their
brethren described in Anson’s voyages, as animating the profound
solitudes of the island of Tinian, appeared to have no master.
At length, just as I was beginning to wish myself very heartily in a
less romantic region, I heard the loud, though not unmusical, tones of a
powerful female voice, echoing through the arched green avenues;
presently, a stout ruddy young peasant, very picturesquely attired in
brown and scarlet, came hoydening along, driving a mule before her,
laden with two enormous panniers of grapes. To ask for a share of this
luxuriant load, and to compliment the fair driver, was instantaneous on
my part, but to no purpose. I was answered by a sly wink, “We all belong
to Senhor Josè Dias, whose corral, or farm-yard, is half a league
distant. There, Senhor, if you follow that road, and don’t puzzle
yourself by straying to the right or left, you will soon reach it, and
the bailiff, I dare say, will be proud to give you as many grapes as you
please. Good morning, happy days to you! I must mind my business.”
Seating herself between the tantalizing panniers, she was gone in an
instant, and I had the good luck to arrive straight at the wicket of a
rude, dry wall, winding up and down several bushy slopes in a wild
irregular manner. If the outside of this enclosure was rough and
unpromising, the interior presented a most cheering scene of rural
opulence. Droves of cows and goats milking; ovens, out of which huge
cakes of savoury bread had just been taken; ranges of beehives, and long
pillared sheds, entirely tapestried with purple and yellow muscadine
grapes, half candied, which were hung up to dry. A very good-natured,
classical-look-magister pecorum, followed by two well-disciplined,
though savage-eyed dogs, whom the least glance of their master prevented
from barking, gave me a hearty welcome, and with genuine hospitality not
only allowed me the free range of his domain, but set whatever it
produced in the greatest perfection before me. A contest took place
between two or three curly-haired, chubby-faced children, who should be
first to bring me walnuts fresh from the shell, bowls of milk, and
cream-cheeses, made after the best of fashions, that of the province of
Alemtejo.
I found myself so abstracted from the world in this retirement, so
perfectly transported back some centuries into primitive patriarchal
times, that I don’t recollect having ever enjoyed a few hours of more
delightful calm. “Here,” did I say to myself, “am I out of the way of
courts and ceremonies, and commonplace visitations, or salutations, or
gossip.” But, alas! how vain is all one thinks or says to one’s self
nineteen times out of twenty.
Whilst I was blessing my stars for this truce to the irksome bustle of
the life I had led ever since her Majesty’s arrival at Cintra, a loud
hallooing, the cracking of whips, and the tramping of horses, made me
start up from the snug corner in which I had established myself, and
dispelled all my soothing visions. Luis de Miranda, the colonel of the
Cascais regiment, an intimate confidant and favourite of the Prince of
Brazil, broke in upon me with a thousand (as he thought) obliging
reproaches, for having deserted Ramalhaô the very morning he had come on
purpose to dine with me, and to propose a ride after dinner to a
particular point of the Cintra mountains, which commands, he assured me,
such a prospect as I had not yet been blessed with in Portugal. “It is
not even now,” said he, “too late. I have brought your horses along
with me, whom I found fretting and stamping under a great tree at the
entrance of these foolish lanes. Come, get into your stirrups for God’s
sake, and I will answer for your thinking yourself well repaid by the
scene I shall disclose to you.”
As I was doomed to be disturbed and talked out of the elysium in which I
had been lapped for these last seven or eight hours, it was no matter in
what position, whether on foot or on horseback; I therefore complied,
and away we galloped. The horses were remarkably sure-footed, or else, I
think, we must have rolled down the precipices; for our road,
“If road it could be call’d where road was none,”
led us by zigzags and short cuts over steeps and acclivities about three
or four leagues, till reaching a heathy desert, where a solitary cross
staring out of a few weather-beaten bushes, marked the highest point of
this wild eminence, one of the most expansive prospects of sea, and
plain, and distant mountains, I ever beheld, burst suddenly upon me,
rendered still more vast, aërial, and indefinite, by the visionary,
magic vapour of the evening sun.
After enjoying a moment or two the general effect, I began tracing out
the principal objects in the view, as far, that is to say, as they could
be traced, through the medium of the intense glowing haze. I followed
the course of the Tagus, from its entrance till it was lost in the low
estuaries beyond Lisbon. Cascais appeared with its long reaches of wall
and bomb-proof casemates like a Moorish town, and by the help of a glass
I distinguished a tall palm lifting itself above a cluster of white
buildings.
“Well,” said I, to my conductor, “this prospect has certainly charms
worth seeing; but not sufficient to make me forget that it is high time
to get home and refresh ourselves.” “Not so fast,” was the answer, “we
have still a great deal more to see.”
Having acquired, I can hardly tell why or wherefore, a sheep-like habit
of following wherever he led, I spurred after him down a rough
declivity, thick strewn with rolling stones and pebbles. At the bottom
of this descent, a dreary sun-burnt plain extended itself far and wide.
Whilst we dismounted and halted a few minutes to give our horses breath,
I could not help observing, that the view we were now contemplating but
ill-rewarded the risk of breaking our necks in riding down such rapid
declivities. He smiled, and asked me whether I saw nothing at all
interesting in the prospect. “Yes,” said I, “a sort of caravan I
perceive, about a quarter of a mile off, is by no means uninteresting;
that confused group of people in scarlet, with gleaming arms and
sumpter-mules, and those striped awnings stretched from ruined walls,
present exactly that kind of scenery I should expect to meet with in the
neighbourhood of Grand Cairo.” “Come then,” said he, “it is time to
clear up this mystery, and tell you for what purpose we have taken such
a long and fatiguing ride. The caravan which strikes you as being so
very picturesque, is composed of the attendants of the Prince of Brazil,
who has been passing the whole day upon a shooting-party, and is just at
this moment taking a little repose beneath yonder awnings. It was by his
desire I brought you here, for I have his commands to express his wishes
of having half-an-hour’s conversation with you, unobserved, and in
perfect incognito. Walk on as if you were collecting plants or taking
sketches, I will apprize his royal highness, and you will meet as it
were by chance, and without any form. No one shall be near enough to
hear a word you say to each other, for I will take my station at the
distance of at least one hundred paces, and keep off all spies and
intruders.”
I did as I was directed. A little door in the ruined wall, against which
an awning was fixed, opened, and there appeared a young man of rather a
prepossessing figure, fairer and ruddier than most of his countrymen,
who advanced towards me with a very pleasant engaging countenance, moved
his hat in a dignified graceful manner, and after insisting upon my
being covered, began addressing himself to me with great precipitation,
in a most fluent lingua-franca, half Italian and half Portuguese. This
jargon is very prevalent at the Ajuda[22] palace, where Italian singers
are in much higher request and fashion than persons of deeper tone and
intellect.
The first question his royal highness honoured me with was, whether I
had visited his cabinet of instruments. Upon my answering in the
affirmative, and that the apparatus appeared to me extremely perfect,
and in admirable order, he observed, “The arrangement is certainly good,
for one of my particular friends, a very learned man, has made it; but
notwithstanding the high price I have paid, your Ramsdens and Dollonds
have treated themselves more generously than me. I believe,” continued
his royal highness, “according to what the Duke d’Alafoens has
repeatedly assured me, I am conversing with a person who has no weak,
blind prejudices, in favour of his country, and who sees things as they
are, not as they have been, or as they ought to be. That commercial
greediness the English display in every transaction has cost us dear in
more than one particular.”
He then ran over the ground Pombal had so often trodden bare, both in
his state papers and in various publications which had been promulgated
during his administration, and I soon perceived of what school his royal
highness was a disciple.
“We deserve all this,” continued he, “and worse, for our tame
acquiescence in every measure your cabinet dictates; but no wonder,
oppressed and debased as we are, by ponderous, useless institutions.
When there are so many drones in a hive, it is in vain to look for
honey. Were you not surprised, were you not shocked, at finding us so
many centuries behind the rest of Europe?”
I bowed, and smiled. This spark of approbation induced, I believe, his
royal highness to blaze forth into a flaming encomium upon certain
reforms and purifications which were carrying on in Brabant, under the
auspices of his most sacred apostolic Majesty Joseph the Second. “I have
the happiness,” continued the Prince, “to correspond not unfrequently
with this enlightened sovereign. The Duke d’Alafoens, who has likewise
the advantage of communicating with him, never fails to give me the
detail of these salutary proceedings. When shall we have sufficient
manliness to imitate them!”
Though I bowed and smiled again, I could not resist taking the liberty
of observing that such very rapid and vigorous measures as those his
imperial Majesty had resorted to, were more to be admired than imitated;
that people who had been so long in darkness, if too suddenly broken in
upon by a stream of effulgence, were more likely to be blinded than
enlightened; and that blows given at random by persons whose eyes were
closed were dangerous, and might fall heaviest perhaps in directions
very opposite to those for which they were intended. This was rather
bold, and did not seem to please the novice in boldness.
After a short pause, which allowed him, at least, an opportunity of
taking breath, he looked steadily at me, and perceiving my countenance
arrayed in the best expression of admiration I could throw into it,
resumed the thread of his philosophical discourse, and even condescended
to detail some very singular and, as they struck me, most perilous
projects. Continuing to talk on with an increased impetus (like those
whose steps are accelerated by running down hill) he dropped some vague
hints of measures that filled me not only with surprise, but with a
sensation approaching to horror. I bowed, but I could not smile. My
imagination, which had caught the alarm at the extraordinary nature of
the topics he was discoursing upon, conjured up a train of appalling
images, and I asked myself more than once whether I was not under the
influence of a distempered dream.
Being too much engaged in listening to himself to notice my confusion,
he worked as hard as a pioneer in clearing away the rubbish of ages,
entered minutely and not unlearnedly into the ancient jurisprudence and
maxims of his country, its relations with foreign powers, and the rank
from whence it had fallen in modern times, to be attributed in a great
measure, he observed, to a blind and mistaken reliance upon the selfish
politics of our predominant island. Although he did not spare my
country, he certainly appeared not over partial to his own. He painted
its military defects and priest-ridden policy in vivid colours. In
short, this part of our discourse was a “_deploratio Lusitanicæ
Gentis_,” full as vehement as that which the celebrated Damien a Goes,
to show his fine Latin and fine humanity, poured forth some centuries
ago over the poor wretched Laplanders.
Not approving in any degree the tendency of all this display, I most
heartily prayed it might end. Above an hour had passed since it began,
and flattered as I was by the protraction of so condescending a
conference, I could not help thinking that these fountains of honour are
fountains of talk and not of mercy; they flow over, if once set a going,
without pity or moderation. Persons in supreme stations, whom no one
ventures to contradict, run on at a furious rate. You frequently flatter
yourself they are exhausted; but you flatter yourself in vain. Sometimes
indeed, by way of variety, they contradict themselves, and then the
debate is carried on between self and self, to the desperation of their
subject auditors, who, without being guilty of a word in reply, are
involved in the same penalty us the most captious disputant. This was my
case. I scarcely uttered a syllable after my first unsuccessful essay;
but thousands of words were nevertheless lavished upon me, and
innumerable questions proposed and answered by the questioner with equal
rapidity.
In return for the honour of being admitted to this monological dialogue,
I kept bowing and nodding; and towards the close of the conference,
contrived to smile again pretty decently. His royal highness, I learned
afterwards, was satisfied with my looks and gestures, and even bestowed
a brevet upon me of a great deal more erudition than I possessed or
pretended to.
The sun set, the dews fell, the Prince retired, Louis de Miranda
followed him, and I remounted my horse with an indigestion of sounding
phrases, and the most confirmed belief that “_the church was in
danger_.”
Tired and exhausted, I threw myself on my sofa the moment I reached
Ramalhaô; but the agitation of my spirits would not allow me any repose.
I swallowed some tea with avidity, and driving to the palace, evocated
the archbishop confessor, who had been locked up above half-an-hour in
his interior cabinet. To him I related all that had passed at this
unsought, unexpected interview. The consequences in time developed
themselves.