An hour or two passed away almost imperceptibly in the pleasing delirium these syren notes inspired, and it was not without regret I saw the company disperse and the spell dissolve. The ladies of the apartment having received a summons to attend her Majesty’s supper, curtsied us off very gracefully, and vanished.
In our way home we met the Sacrament, enveloped in a glare of light, marching in state to pay some sick person a farewell visit; and that hopeful young nobleman, the Conde de Villa Nova,[13] preceding the canopy in a scarlet mantle, and tinkling a silver bell. He is always in close attendance upon the Host, and passes the flower of his days in this singular species of danglement. No lover was ever more jealous of his mistress than this ingenuous youth of his bell. He cannot endure any other person should give it vibration. The parish officers of the extensive and populous district in which his palace is situated, from respect to his birth and opulence, indulge him in this caprice, and indeed a more perseverant bell-bearer they could not have chosen. At all hours and in all weathers he is ready to perform this holy office. In the dead of the night, or in the most intense heat of the day, out he issues and down he dives, or up he climbs, to any dungeon or garret where spiritual assistance of this nature is demanded.
It has been again and again observed, that there is no accounting for fancies. Every person has his own, which he follows to the best of his means and abilities. The old Marialva’s delights are centered between his two silver recipiendaries; the Marquis his son in dancing attendance with the Queen; and Villa Nova, in announcing with his bell to all true believers the approach of celestial majesty. The present rage of the scribbler of all these extravagances is modinhas, and under its prevalence he feels half-tempted to set sail for the Brazils, the native land of these enchanting compositions, to live in tents, such as the Chevalier de Parny describes in his agreeable little voyage, and swing in hammocks, or glide over smooth mats surrounded by bands of youthful minstrels, diffusing at every step the perfume of jasmine and roses.
LETTER XV.
Excessive sultriness of Lisbon.—Night sounds of the city.—Public gala in the garden of the Conde de Villa Nova.—Visit to the Anjeja Palace.—The heir of the family.—Marvellous narrations of a young priest.—Convent of Savoyard nuns.—Father Theodore’s chickens.—Sequestered group of beauties.—Singing of the Scarlati.
29th June, 1787.
THE bright sunshine which has lately been our portion, glorious as it is, begins to tire me. Twenty times a day I cannot help wishing myself extended at full-length upon the fresh herbage of some shady English valley, where fairies gambol in the twilights of Midsummer, whispering in the ears of their sleeping favourites the good or evil fortunes which await them. It is too hot for these oracular little elvish beings in Portugal, one must not here expect their inspirations; but would to Heaven some revelation of this or any other nature had warned me off in time, from the blinding dust and excessive sultriness of Lisbon and its neighbourhood. How silly, when one is well and cool, to gad abroad, in the vain hope of making what is really best, better. Depend upon it, there is more vernal delight and joy in our green hills and copses, than in all these stunted olive fields and sun-burnt promontories.
We have a homely saying, that what is poison to one man is meat to another, and true enough; for these days and nights of glowing temperature, which oppress me beyond endurance, are the delight and boast of the inhabitants of this capital. The heat seems not only to have new venomed the stings of the fleas and the musquitoes, but to have drawn out, the whole night long, all the human ephemera of Lisbon. They frisk, and dance, and tinkle their guitars from sunset to sunrise. The dogs, too, keep yelping and howling without intermission; and what with the bellowing of litanies by parochial processions, the whizzing of fireworks, which devotees are perpetually letting off in honour of some member or other of the celestial hierarchy, and the squabbles of bullying rake-hells, who scour the streets in search of adventures, there is no getting a wink of sleep, even if the heat would allow it.
As to those quiet nocturnal parties, where ingenuous youths rest their heads, not on the lap of earth, but on that of their mistresses, who are soothingly employed in delivering the jetty locks of their lovers from too abundant a population, I have nothing to say against them, nor am I much disturbed by the dashing sound of a few downfalls[14] from the windows; but these dog-howlings exceed every annoyance of the kind I ever endured, and give no slight foretaste of the infernal regions.
Nothing but amusement and racket being thought of here at this season (when to celebrate St. Peter’s festival with all the noise and extravagance in your power, is not more a profane inclination than a pious duty,) that simpleton, the Conde de Villa Nova, opened his garden last night to the nob and mob-ility of Lisbon. There was a dull illumination of paper lanterns, and a sort of pavilion awkwardly constructed for dancing, beneath which the prettiest French and English mantua-makers, milliners, and abigails of the metropolis, figured away in cotillons with the Duke of Cadaval and some other young men of the first distinction, who, like many as hopeful in our own capital, are never at their ease but in low company. Two or three of my servants accompanied my tailor to the fête, and returned enraptured with the affable pleasing manners of the foreign milliners and native nobility.