“The fountain of love in the garden of tears” is the spot called to this day, and a crumbling little Gothic convent founded by the lover king between this and the river bears the name of “the convent of tears.”
Above us gleams the long white building of Santa Clara, and zigzagging up the steep hill lies the path, shrines at each turn of the way inviting to devotion and to rest. The sun beats fiercely on the steep white road, but the view from the summit upon the esplanade that faces the convent church repays the trouble of the climb. Opposite, across the river, the city is piled up upon its grand amphitheatre of hills, the huge, square bulk of the university and the Sé Nova topping it all; whilst beyond the rolling hills covered with olives provide a dark-green background, which throws into higher relief the blue, white, and pink houses grouped in the limpid air, under a cloudless sky, flooded with sunlight.
Of all the rich foundation of the royal convent of Santa Clara all that now remains devoted to religious uses is the white church, and the adjoining sanctuary of the saintly queen, tended by ladies dedicated to charitable work, but not cloistered. The church is mainly of the seventeenth century, in the usual “Jesuit” style, and is crowded with gilt and carved woodwork; a large stately, unencumbered interior, containing several sarcophagi of members of the royal house, and the rich treasure in the sacristy must on no account be missed. A turret stair at the west end leads into a small loft overlooking the church, and richly, but sombrely decorated. Here stands a little altar, and on lifting a trap in the centre of it, and peering down through a grating a most impressive scene is presented to the view. A large, solemn choir-chamber, with carved stalls in rows, extending lengthwise along it, and the ample central space occupied by a magnificent canopy, under which, lit by a tiny red lamp burning eternally before it, lies a great coffin of rich repoussé silver, in which there rests the body of the sainted queen, the patron of Coimbra, the heroic Aragonese princess, who in 1323, rode between the armies of her husband, King Diniz, and their rebellious son, and stayed their unnatural strife at her own great peril.
SANTA CLARA, COIMBRA.
One other royal shade at least haunts the royal convent of Santa Clara. Here, retired from the turmoil of ambitions and wrongs, of which through her youth she had been the victim, passed the long years of her devout renunciation that injured Princess Joan, “the Beltraneja,” daughter of Henry IV. of Castile, whom the great Isabel the Catholic ousted from her inheritance. Here in Coimbra, too, the tragedy of Maria de Telles, subject of poems and plays innumerable, was enacted in real life. King Ferdinand the Handsome, about 1371, though betrothed to a Castilian princess, fell in love with a lady called Leonor de Telles, and so endangered the recently concluded alliance. His people rose in revolt, and the lady’s family, especially her sister Maria, resented the adulterous connection. Leonor, secure in her mastery over the king, wreaked a terrible revenge upon those who opposed her; poison, the dagger, and the dungeon doing her fell work, until all Portugal was in fear at her feet, and the king became her wedded husband. The virtuous sister, Maria de Telles, happily married to the king’s half-brother, João, and safe in her palace at Coimbra, was difficult to attack. But the wicked Leonor was equal to the occasion, and, like a female Iago, instilled into the ears of the prince suspicions of his wife’s fidelity, and with forged evidence prompted him to revenge. The enraged husband murdered his protesting and innocent wife in cold blood at Coimbra (but not at the house now shown as the scene of the tragedy), and as soon as the foul deed was done Queen Leonor, who had been waiting in an adjoining room, entered, and, in the presence of the murdered Maria, mocked at the husband’s pain, and showed him that her sister was innocent. The prince in his rage attempted to murder the treacherous queen, but was seized, and subsequently escaped into exile, whilst Leonor lived to perpetrate other misdeeds.
I paced the acacia-shaded alameda as the sun sank below the hills, thinking of these sad memories of the times long past; of the noble self-sacrifice of the sainted queen, of the long agony of the Beltraneja, and of the blood-stained soul of Leonor. The air was cool and fresh, and the glowing sunset faded from crimson to dead rose in the west; but across the shimmering river the after-glow, like a luminous opal dawn, threw up the black silhouette of the wooded ridge, and the vast bulk of Santa Clara on the crest stood sharp and clear as if cut out of black velvet and laid upon pearly satin. And just over the great convent church a star of dazzling brilliancy—the brightest star, it seemed to me, I have ever beheld—blazed out alone in the pellucid sky, and tipped with diamond the cross above the silent silver shrine with its dim red lamp burning through the centuries. Thus sweet self-sacrifice conquers over time and death. The mouldering bones are naught, darkness enshrouds even the huge building in which they lie; yet far aloft the cross still stands distinct above all, gemmed with its glittering star, as the eternal memory of good deeds done still illumines the blackness of the world.
The next morning I took the train for Chão de Maçãs, a little roadside station, where a carriage had been ordered to meet me, and carry me two leagues over the mountains to Thomar. There was some stay at Pombal, where it was a feast day, and the peasant costumes were seen at their best—good upstanding people these, gaily clad, sober, and orderly, coming to the railway stations in good time and unhurried, but not hours before the train starts, as the peasants do in Spain. In the market, under the shadow of the great mediæval castle ruins on the hill, they do their buying and selling, live-stock for the most part to-day, without vociferation, but with an earnest quietness which is as far as possible from depression. Here at Pombal, and at Albergaria near, the men wear brown undyed homespun jackets, and trousers girt with red sashes. The bag cap is almost universal, and mutton-chop whiskers are the rule, but what will attract a foreign visitor most in their dress are the curious triple-caped ulsters, made of layers of grass, seen in many places in Portugal in wet weather, but especially in this neighbourhood. These garments, bulky as they look, are not heavy, and are an excellent protection against heavy rain.
The women here have very full, short, gathered skirts, and though none of them wear shoes or stockings hardly any are without heavy ancient jewelry of gold filigree apparently of considerable value. The bodices of the dresses are mostly red or yellow, and a broad horizontal stripe of bright colour often enlivens the skirt also, their brilliant head-kerchiefs being usually topped by a broad-brimmed velveteen hat, for the pork-pie hat of the north has been left behind now.
We had mounted into the country of pines and heather when we stopped at the little station of Chão de Maçãs, dumped down, as it seemed, in the wilderness with just a row of one-storey whitewashed cottages opposite. But where was the carriage? None had been heard of there, and I found myself several miles from anywhere, and with no means of conveyance. Sympathetic interest was not wanting. A muleteer loudly deplored that he was engaged to carry a load of goods to Ourem, and could not take me to Thomar. Clearly something must be done, however; so the little meeting of grave consultants adjourned from the station platform to the door of the humble general shop and tavern opposite to continue the important discussion. It happened that the whole village was just then deeply absorbed in witnessing an itinerant barber cutting a man’s hair in an open stable whilst the onlookers criticised and suggested improvements and variations in the process; but when the news spread that a strange gentleman was stranded at Chão de Maçãs with no conveyance to take him to Thomar, the critics of the barber’s art adjourned en masse to the tavern, and respectfully joined in the discussion as to my fate. They were quite unanimous in agreeing that the Senhor Mathias Araujo, the hotelkeeper at Thomar, could not have received the letter or he would certainly have sent the carriage, of that there could be no doubt whatever. But oh! that correio, the post, was always at fault; and then many anecdotes were given at great length of hairbreadth escapes and heavy losses incurred by the sins and omissions of the Portuguese post-office. All this was no doubt interesting, but not helpful to me in my quandary, and I gently led the talk again to the chance of my getting a conveyance. The outlook was not hopeful, but the sympathetic muleteer somewhat doubtfully suggested to the innkeeper that some one near had a pair of mules. A significant look passed round, but the hint was not lost upon me, and by dint of much diplomacy a rapaz was sent off for the mules. He returned by-and-by with an excellent-looking pair of animals, and an ancient shandrydan was pulled out of a stable. I wondered what had caused the hesitation, but my wonder did not last long. No sooner were the mules hitched to the bar than they began to kick furiously. Kicking chains were of little use; the lout who drove the team used his whip with heart and arm, the pieced and spliced rope and chain harness was strained almost to breaking, and the ancient “machine” threatened every moment to disintegrate into splinters.