* * * * * *
I felt relieved when the appearance of Don Pedro and his uncle, who had been walking to the end of an immensely long avenue of pines, warded off a conversation that began to press hard upon me. We returned altogether to the Capitan Mor’s, and found dinner ready.
Both Don Pedro and myself were sorry to leave Mafra, and should have had no objection to another race along the cloisters and dormitories with the lay-brother. The evening was bright and clear, and the azure tints of the distant sea inexpressibly lovely. We drove with a tumultuous rapidity over the rough-paved roads, that the Marquis and I could hardly hear a word we said to each other. Don Pedro had mounted his horse. Verdeil, who preceded us in the carinho, seemed to outstrip the winds. His mule, one of the most fiery and gigantic of her species, excited by repeated floggings and the shout of a hulking Portuguese postilion, perched up behind the carriage, galloped at an ungovernable rate; and at about a league from the rocks of Cintra, thought proper to jerk out its drivers into the midst of some bushes at the foot of a lofty bank, nearly perpendicular, where they still remained sprawling when we passed by.
Verdeil hobbled up to us, and pointed to the carinho in the ditch below. Except a slight contusion in the knee, he had received no hurt. I exclaimed immediately, that his escape was miraculous, and that, doubtless, St. Anthony had some hand in it. My friend, who has always the horrors of heresy before his eyes, whispered me that the devil had saved him this time, but might not be so favourably disposed another.
It was not half-past five, when we reached Cintra. The Marchioness, the Abade, and the children, were waiting our arrival.
Feeling my head in a whirl, and my ideas as much jolted and jumbled as my body, I returned home just before it fell dark, to enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted calm. The scenery of my ample saloon, its air of seclusion, its silence, seemed to breathe a momentary tranquillity over my spirits. The mat smoothly laid down, and formed of the finest and most glossy straw, assumed by candlelight a delightful, soft, and harmonious colour. It looked so cool and glistening that I stretched myself upon it. There did I lie supine, contemplating the serene summer-sky, and the moon rising slowly from behind the brow of a shrubby hill. A faint breeze blowing aside the curtains, discovered the summit of the woods in the garden, and beyond, a wide expanse of country, terminated by plains of sea and hazy promontories.
LETTER XXIV.
A saloon in the highest style of oriental decoration.—Amusing stories of King John the Fifth and his recluses.—Cheerful funeral.—Refreshing ramble to the heights of Penha Verde.
August 29th, 1787.
IT was furiously hot, and I trifled away the whole morning in my pavilion, surrounded by fidalgos in flowered bed-gowns, and musicians in violet-coloured accoutrements, with broad straw-hats, like bonzes or talapoins, looking as sunburnt, vacant, and listless, as the inhabitants of Ormus or Bengal; so that my company as well as my apartment wore the most decided oriental appearance: the divan raised a few inches above the floor, the gilt trellis-work of the windows, and the pellucid streams of water rising from a tank immediately beneath them, supplied in endless succession by springs from the native rock.