There was young Crowberry; but, after what he had said about his father's confused affairs, the monk did not think it fair to ask him for a loan. There was also Sebastian's Asturian nobleman; but loyalty to his dead friend restrained Antonio from requesting the Spaniard's further help. In his difficulty he wrote to Senhor Castro and followed up the letter by presenting himself in person at the old Castro cellars in Oporto early in December.
Senhor Castro, who had grown old and liverish, did not want to be troubled. He admitted that Antonio's English journey had firmly established the Castro fortunes; but, although he was a rich man, he gave proofs that all his money was invested beyond immediate recall. In the long run, Antonio crossed the bridge of boats from Gaia empty-handed.
He searched for the cobbler, his old landlord; but the whole family had gone to Brazil. Twice or thrice during his heart-wearing stay in the city he was cheered by the best of greetings in the worst of Portuguese from Gallegos to whom he had been kind nine years before. These Gallegos, however, did not help him to raise five hundred pounds. They were the Gallegos who had failed; for the Gallegos who had succeeded were all returned into Galicia with their savings.
A few days before Christmas the monk clinched a bad bargain with a small firm of so-called Anglo-Portuguese bankers, who were really common money-lenders in bankers' clothing. The head of the firm hailed from Hamburg and his partner was a Portuguese Jew. These plausible rascals agreed to lend Antonio a thousand pounds on unconscionable terms. Although the nominal interest was only seven per cent., one extra and another made it over twenty. For sending a clerk to attend the transfer at Villa Branca they required forty pounds, although his expenses could not exceed twelve. The conditions as to repayment were harsh. As security, the usurers required a first mortgage on the abbey, a second mortgage on the farm, a note of hand from Antonio, and a hold on the receipts from wine. The monk's heart sank as he signed the fatal parchment; but he espied the gleam in the Hamburg man's eye too late.
On New Year's Day, Antonio had a moment of brightness when the abbey passed finally out of the control of the Fazenda official; but he soon found that he had exchanged a whip for a scorpion. Before the moneylender's clerk returned to Oporto he confided vexatious instructions to the most unprincipled of the Villa Branca attorneys, who rarely allowed a month to pass thereafter without sending for Antonio on some frivolous pretext. Whenever this objectionable person and his still more objectionable wife desired a Sunday jaunt they drove over to the farm or the abbey, sponging on Antonio's hospitality and poking inquisitorial noses into everything. One day the pair brought two char-à-bancs full of their kindred to celebrate the senhora's birthday by a picnic at the stepping-stones; and when Antonio very courteously begged that the good things might be drunk and eaten in some other part of the domain, the attorney promptly became his active enemy.
Years passed. In spite of a hundred obstacles the wines and liqueurs made steady progress, and Antonio seemed to be within reach of his goal. Having ground out to the usurers nearly two thousand pounds in legal costs, interest, and repayment of principal, he owed them less than two hundred. A debt on his farm still remained; but the Navares' mortgagee was a reasonable man who was willing to wait. The monk reckoned that one more prosperous year would release him from the moneylenders' clutches and that, two years later, both the farm and the abbey would be his.
But Portugal's honest, hardworking men and women were once more being brought to the brink of ruin by the politicians. The minister, Costa Cabral, having been created Count of Thomar, sought to repay Queen Maria da Gloria by measures of excessive royalism; and immediately all the turbulent spirits in the country were let loose. Some rough-and-ready poet dashed down a Portuguese Marseillaise, in which an imaginary "Mary of the Fountain" was hymned as a Joan of Arc raised up to save the fatherland. In Villa Branca and Navares, Antonio often heard the lads singing:
Maria of the Fountain
Has a sword in her hand,
To slay the false Cabrals,
The traitors to their land.
Forward! brothers, forward!
Forward! be our cry;
On! for holy Freedom
To conquer or to die.
Suddenly the Septembrists took arms. Under the Viscount Sa da Bandeira there broke out the insurrection called by some the Mob-war and by others the war of Maria da Fonte. Cabral fell, and the Marshal Saldanha filled his place. To end the bloodshed and disorder foreign Powers intervened.