“Farewell, Don Luis!” said the soi-disant Friar, as they came in sight of the gates of the Count’s estate. “I have borne you company thus far, and we must now part. We shall meet again some day, I hope; if not, think of me sometimes, as I would be, and not as I have been; but I fear I shall not be a more honest man as a real Friar than I have been as a pretended one. Adeos, senhor!”
And, without waiting for an answer, he rode back the way he had come; while Luis, followed by Pedro, hastened to embrace his father, although the tidings he had to communicate must, he knew, cause much sorrow to the old Count.
Volume Two—Chapter Twenty.
More than a year had passed since the dreadful earthquake of Lisbon, as the violent convulsion of the globe in 1755 is commonly called, although it was felt over the greater part of Europe, to the north of England, and to the shores of Africa, where many towns were destroyed or severely damaged. Under the energetic superintendence of the Prime Minister, the city was rapidly rising from its ashes; and instead of the dark, narrow, and winding lanes of the old town, fine broad streets were planned by able architects invited by him from England and France.
The tents and wooden huts in which the inhabitants had so long dwelt, were ordered to be destroyed, to prevent the rogues and vagabonds, who it appears had again, notwithstanding the terrors of the hanging system, increased to an alarming degree, from harbouring in them.
The horrors of the previous year began gradually to fade from the recollection of men, and they forgot that beneath the ground on which they dwelt burnt those unquenchable fires which might, at any time, burst forth and again destroy their homes and property.
The King and the royal family had taken up their residence in the Palace of the Necessidades, having dwelt for nearly a year in one built of wood, of one story high, to run less risk of injury in case of a recurrence of the former disastrous visitation.
It was some hours past the time of sunset, when, in a cabinet of the palace, the Minister was seated at a table thickly strewed with papers, deeply immersed in the affairs of the state, it might be presumed, from the lines of thought and care which marked his brow. He wrote on for some time, without stopping or hesitating a moment for want of subject, and then, having concluded the work he was about, he threw himself back in the high leathern armchair in which he was sitting, and resting his brow upon his hand, continued for many minutes wrapped in meditation.