When nearly all of the most influential in the country were interested in the preservation of the accused, and all feeling that Donna Theresa was the most calculated to persuade the Monarch to pardon them, she had experienced but little difficulty, aided by high bribes, in penetrating to the apartments of the King; though, on Carvalho’s endeavouring to discover the delinquents, every one solemnly averred that they had never seen her enter,—though, in her page’s suit, she might have passed them unobserved.
Let her fate be a warning to others. Let those consider, whom passion would lead from the strict path of duty, that not themselves alone, but many others also, whom they once loved, and by whom they were beloved, they may drag down to perdition.
When Donna Theresa returned to consciousness, she found herself surrounded by her own attendants, and when she was pronounced in a fit state to be removed, she was conveyed to the Convent of Santos, where a large income was settled on her, and a retinue appointed to attend her. Though nominally a prisoner, she had perfect liberty. She did not die:—such was too happy a lot for her. For many, many years she lived on, a prey to remorse, hated and scorned by her few surviving relatives, till age had wrinkled her brow, and no trace of her former enchanting loveliness remained. Guilty of one crime she was, but not that of which she was accused; yet none would believe her assertions, when she had failed to procure the pardon of her husband. Such was her punishment!
For eighteen years did her father, the Marquis d’Alorna, his wife, and children, languish in separate dungeons, and scarcely one of his kindred escaped the like fate.
She became deaf and blind, and at length she died. On her tomb was found inscribed, “The Murderess of her Family.”
Volume Three—Chapter Eighteen.
We would gladly avoid detailing the following narrative, but no one who is writing the life of the great Prime Minister of Portugal can pass it over in silence; and while his name is mentioned in history, so will be the dreadful tragedy in which he was the principal actor, with the execrations of all who have a sentiment of pity for human suffering in their bosoms; even had the sufferers been proved guilty, which we, as Britons, and lovers of our own just laws affirm they were not. Guilty in the sight of Heaven, some of the accused too probably were, but by no law founded on common equity or humanity were they proved so.
The morning of the 13th of January broke dark and gloomy on the heads of a vast concourse of people, already assembled in a large open space on the borders of the Tagus, near the Castle of Belem.