The sermon ended, fiddling began anew with redoubled vigour, and I, disgusted with such unseasonable levity, retired home in dudgeon. This little cloud of peevishness was soon dissipated by the cheering presence of the good Prior of Avis, than whom there exists not, perhaps, in this world a more benign, evangelical character; one who gives glory to God with less ostentation, or bears a more unaffected goodwill towards men. This excellent prelate had been passing his morning, not in attending pompous ceremonies, but in consoling the sick and relieving the indigent; climbing up to their miserable chambers to afford assistance in the name of the saint whose festival was celebrating, and whose fame, for every charitable beneficent act, had been handed down by the inhabitants of Lisbon from father to child, through a long series of generations.
Our discourse was not of a nature to incline me to relish pomps and vanities. I waved seeing the procession which was expected to pass through the principal streets of the city, and, accompanied by my reverend friend, enjoyed the serenity of the evening on the shore of Belem. We stopped as we passed by the Marialva palace, and took up Don Pedro and his nursing father, the old Abade, who proposed a visit to the Carthusian convent of Cachiez.
In about half an hour we were set down before the church, which fronts the royal gardens, and were ushered into a solemn, silent quadrangle. Several spectres of the order were gliding about the cloisters, which branch off from this court. In the middle is a marble fountain, shaded by pyramids of clipped box; around are seven or eight small chapels; one of which contains a coloured image of the Saviour in the last dreadful agonies of his passion, covered with livid bruises and corrupted gore.
Whilst we were examining this too faithful effigy, some of the monks, by leave of their superior, gathered around us; one of them, a tall interesting figure, attracted my attention by the deep melancholy which sat upon his features. Upon inquiry, I learned he was only two-and-twenty years of age, of illustrious parentage, and lively talents; but the immediate cause of his having sought these mansions of stillness and mortification, the Grand Prior seemed loth to communicate.
I could not help observing, as this young victim stood before me, and I contemplated the evening light thrown on the arcades of the quadrangle, how many setting suns he was likely to behold wasting their gleams upon these walls, and what a wearisome succession of years he had in all probability devoted himself to consume within their precincts. The eyes of the good prior filled with tears, Verdeil shuddered, and the Abade, forgetting the superstitious part he generally acts in religious places, exclaimed loudly against the toleration of human sacrifices, and the folly of permitting those to renounce the world, whose youth incapacitates them from making a due estimate of its sorrows or advantages. As for Don Pedro, his serious disposition received additional gloom from the objects with which we were environed.
The chill gust that blew from an arched hall where the fathers are interred, and whose pavement returned a hollow sound as we walked over it, struck him with horror. It was the first time of his entering a Carthusian convent, and, to my surprise, he appeared ignorant of the severities of the order.
The sun set before we regained our carriage, and our conversation the whole way home partook of the impression which the scenery we had been contemplating inspired.
LETTER XIV.
Curious succession of visiters.—A Seraphic Doctor.—Monsenhor Aguilar.—Mob of old hags, children, and ragamuffins.—Visit to the Theatre in the Rua d’os Condes.—The Archbishop Confessor.—Brazilian Modinhas.—Bewitching nature of that music.—Nocturnal processions.—Enthusiasm of the young Conde de Villanova.—No accounting for fancies.
14th June, 1787.