This speech produced very different effects upon his hearers: the younger were already converts to his opinion; but the old and experienced, who had lived long enough in the world to foresee the probable termination of this military romance, received their King’s determination sorrowfully. Each, in private, endeavoured to persuade him of the impracticability of subduing Africa with a handful of men, unsupported by foreign succours, and depending for their safety in a great measure on the good faith of an infidel ally: they expatiated upon the exhaustless numbers of the Moors, and their knowledge of their own country, where he, would fight upon ground he knew little of, where in the event of a defeat he might be so bewildered as not to get back to his transports, and must consequently resign his troops either to starvation or captivity.
Similar arguments were pressed on him by the ambassadors of foreign courts; but they served only to inflame the courage of Sebastian, and to exasperate him against their masters, those cautious monarchs who proved themselves nominal sons of the church, since they would not contribute one detachment towards his enterprize. His uncle too, the Cardinal Henry, opposed the expedition, and aided by the foreboding lamentations of the Queen dowager, frequently agitated their rash kinsman by unavailing remonstrances.
Sebastian listened respectfully to each; but, seduced into the belief of being born for the destruction of Mahometanism, persevered in his resolution.
To the enchantments of Donna Gonsalva he continually turned from these vexations: her wit enlivened him, her syren voice soothed the most turbulent emotions of his soul, and his unsated eyes found ceaseless delight in following the graceful varieties of her face and figure: yet Sebastian had a void in his heart; a something unfilled, unsatisfied, which he placed to the account of the imperfection of human felicity. Donna Gonsalva was exquisite in person and mind; she certainly loved him, but her love did not meet either the delicacy or the intensity of his: her feelings were obtuse in those trifles to which sensibility is tremblingly alive: she would often pursue her own sprightly pleasures with such eager forgetfulness of him, as to mortify and displease him. Two or three times he had entered her apartments at Xabregas in the bitterness of a spirit traversed and exhausted by political disappointments, and she had not observed it: his watchful passion was never one moment insensible to the slightest variation of its object; not even the mist of an unpleasant thought could shade that heaven of beauty, without disturbing his repose—and she—yes she, often saw him agitated or depressed, without observation.
It was at these periods that Sebastian acknowledged the torments and the omnipotence of love: he saw a defect in his idol, yet he worshipped her still.
But what could he desire more than to be loved with all the powers of her soul? if that soul wanted some of the energy of his, was it not her misfortune rather than her fault? his reason assented to this, though his heart frequently burst out into fond complaints which Gonsalva silenced by the warmest assurance of preference. Under the immediate impression of his grief, she would lose no opportunity of evincing her tenderness, and then Sebastian’s transports would return: but attentions which do not flow spontaneously from a natural softness, seldom are lasting; Donna Gonsalva would soon forget her lover’s character, because her own was of a lighter stamp, and gay thoughtlessness uniformly succeeded a short solicitude.
This perpetual inconsideration deeply wounded the King; for a lover like him, expected to throb in every pulse of her heart. Racked with repeated mortifications, that perhaps owed their existence to an impassioned fastidiousness “which I beseech ye, call a godly sin”—he looked anxiously towards the hour of his departure from Portugal, secretly hoping to endear himself by danger, or at least to rouse some of those sensibilities which were as wholly concealed now by ceaseless gaiety, as when no anxieties existed to call them forth.
Don Antonio was ever Gonsalva’s advocate; sometimes rallying, and sometimes more seriously reproving his royal cousin for pampering a sickly sensitiveness, which thus poisoned life’s chief blessing.
Sir Thomas Stukely, ignorant of his illustrious friend’s discontent, unconsciously increased it; for one night in a walk among the gardens of Ribera, under the boundless and starry heavens, he poured into the attentive ear of Sebastian, the story of his early life: that story, though it might be comprised in a single incident, was deeply interesting to the young King, whose heart, penetrated with one affection, delighted to sympathize with every other; yet he listened sadly, for he thought the more of Gonsalva’s temperate feelings.
The untimely death of a brother, long and justly beloved, had driven Stukely a wanderer from his country: that brother’s character, made up of every estimable and endearing quality; his fraternal love “exceeding the love of women,” were depicted in the heart-wringing language of a regret increasing with time.