Then the old cathedral bells rang out. But the sea muffled them with velvet. Night began to come. And the splendor of the sea grew grey. The mountain tops looked black and lonely as I said good-bye to them, and veiled with the long floating ribbons of the rain. Three days later I was in Portugal.
The weather had been rough and stormy. There was rain, mist, and continued cold. Then suddenly there blossomed out of the mist and the sea a rich, vari-tinted city—Lisbon. The sun began to shine.
It is a city of glowing gardens, narrow streets, whose painted, stucco dwellings are more than charming—gem-pink, sulphur-yellow, weary violet. They jostle each other in little square places of flowers.
Barefoot women go from door to door to sell fish, carried in baskets upon their heads; slim seminary students in long black, eloquent capes, move about, statues in ivory and jet. And children and girls have the charm of Latin youth.
The Avenida de la Liberdad—wide, tree and flower bordered, paved in black and white stone (from which Rio de Janeiro copied Rio Branco), lined with fanciful, sugar-frosted, gay palaces, is a street of which all Portuguese are proud. It ranks among the lovely thoroughfares of the world.
Because cities possess personality, I say that Lisbon is lovable. It strikes the senses like some forgotten melody of delight. I found an old buff-colored hotel, with black iron-grilled windows and tall green doors, set far back in a quaintly old-world garden, facing a tiny Praça, where I wish I could have lingered—and then been forgotten, and so stayed on forever.
Architecturally speaking, the two loveliest things in Lisbon are the Tower of Belem and the Convent of San Jerónimo, both tributes to the great explorer, Vasco da Gama. The pallid, ivory carven surface of the Convent is not less lovely than the Taj Mahal. It has minarets, too, from which muezzins might have called. The entire building owns a kind of perfection.
In one of its little interior chapels, sleep side by side, Vasco da Gama and the proud poet of Portugal, who wrote in Homeric verse his history—Camoens. And Camoens was not only poet, but warrior, explorer and one of the world’s bravest adventurers. Camoens lived many lives, and all of them were great. The world was his playground. His fiery spirit, which none own today, longed to give his Emperor continents for gifts. He is still Portugal’s great poet; the years have not permitted him to be surpassed.
To refer again to our novelist, De Queiroz, he was a memorable figure in Lisbon in his youth. He was tall, very thin, with an eagle-beak for a nose. He was immaculate in dress. He had his clothes made in London and he always wore a monocle. He was likewise a figure on the Boulevards of Paris. He had unusually fine eyes, with an expression of kindness, quick comprehension, and deep intelligence. His two commanding traits were an Irish sense of humor and the imagination of a poet; this last kept him from joining the ranks of Zola as novelist. This was in 1880.
It was from Lisbon that Madame de Stael’s last famous lover came, when she was trying to console herself for the death of Benjamin Constant. I refer to the Duke of Palmella—one of the men who had most influence over this woman whom Napoleon hated. The Duke of Palmella was at the Congress of Vienna; he was companion of Metternich. Who knows what this too intelligent French woman inspired him to think—and then to say—that had influence upon the now dwindling good-luck of the Man of Destiny. But he forgot her easily; brilliant as she was, to him she was just a pleasant toy—something to fling aside when days of idleness or loneliness were over.