You may suppose, that after adding a walk in the principal alleys of the garden to our other peregrinations, we began to find ourselves somewhat fatigued, and were not sorry to repose ourselves in the Abbot’s apartment till we were summoned once more to our tribune to hear matins performed. It was growing dark, and the innumerable tapers burning before the altars and in every part of the church, began to diffuse a mysterious light. The organs joined again in full accord, the long series of monks and novices entered with slow and solemn steps, and the Abbot resumed his throne with the same pomp as at vespers. The Marquis began muttering his orisons, the Grand Prior to recite his breviary, and I to fall into a profound reverie, which lasted as long as the service, that is to say above two hours. Verdeil, ready to expire with ennui, could not help leaving the tribune and the cloud of incense which filled the choir, to breathe a freer air in the body of the church and its adjoining chapels.
It was almost nine when the monks, after chaunting a most solemn and sonorous hymn in praise of their venerable father, Saint Augustine, quitted the choir. We followed their procession through lofty chapels and arched cloisters, which by a glimmering light appeared to have neither roof nor termination, till it entered an octagon forty feet in diameter, with fountains in the four principal angles. The monks, after dispersing to wash their hands at the several fountains, again resumed their order, and passed two-and-two under a portal thirty feet high into a vast hall, communicating with their refectory by another portal of the same lofty dimensions. Here the procession made a pause, for this chamber is consecrated to the remembrance of the departed, and styled the Hall de Profundis. Before every repast, the monks standing round it in solemn ranks, silently revolve in their minds the precariousness of our frail existence, and offer up prayers for the salvation of their predecessors. I could not help being struck with awe when I beheld by the glow of flaming lamps, so many venerable figures in their black and white habits bending their eyes on the pavement, and absorbed in the most interesting and gloomy of meditations.
The moment allotted to this solemn supplication being passed, every one took his place at the long tables in the refectory, which are made of Brazil-wood, and covered with the whitest linen. Each monk had his glass caraffe of water and wine, his plate of apples and salad set before him; neither fish nor flesh were served up, the vigil of St. Augustine’s day being observed as a fast with the utmost strictness.
To enjoy at a glance this singular and majestic spectacle, we retreated to a vestibule preceding the octagon, and from thence looked through all the portals down the long row of lamps into the refectory, which, owing to its vast length of full two hundred feet, seemed ending in a point. After remaining a few minutes to enjoy this perspective, four monks advanced with torches to light us out of the convent, and bid us good-night with many bows and genuflections.
Our supper at the Capitan Mor’s was very cheerful. We sat up late, notwithstanding our fatigue, talking over the variety of objects that had passed before our eyes in so short a space of time, the crowd of grotesque figures which had stuck to our heels so long and so closely, and the awkward vivacity of the lay-brother.
LETTER XXIII.
High mass.—Garden of the Viscount Ponte de Lima.—Leave Mafra.—An accident.—Return to Cintra.—My saloon.—Beautiful view from it.
August 28th, 1787.
I WAS half asleep, half awake, when the sonorous bells of the convent struck my ears. The Marquis and Don Pedro’s voices in earnest conversation with the Capitan Mor in the adjoining chamber, completely roused me. We swallowed our coffee in haste; the Grand Prior reluctantly left his pillow, and accompanied us to high mass. The monks once more exerted their efforts to prevail on us to dine with them; but we remained inflexible, and to avoid their importunities hastened away, as soon as mass was ended, to the Viscount Ponte de Lima’s gardens, where the deep shade of the bay and ilex skreened us from the excessive heat of the sun.
The Marquis, seating himself by me near one of those clear and copious fountains with which this magnificent Italian-looking garden is refreshed and enlivened, entered into a most serious and semi-official discourse about my stay in Portugal, and the means which were projecting in a very high quarter to render it not only pleasant to myself, but of some importance to many others.