Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal Part 32

My curiosity being fully satisfied upon the subject of the holy crows, I was easily persuaded by the Grand Prior to move off, and drive through the princ.i.p.al streets to see the illuminations in honour of the Infanta, consort to Don Gabriel of Spain, who had produced a prince. A great many idlers being abroad upon the same errand, we proceeded with difficulty, and were very near having the wheels of our carriage dislocated in attempting to pa.s.s an old-fas.h.i.+oned, preposterous coach, belonging to one of the dignitaries of the patriarchal cathedral. I cannot launch forth in praise of the illuminations; but some rockets which were let off in the Terreiro do Paco, surprised me by the vast height to which they rose, and the unusual number of clear blue stars into which they burst. The Portuguese excel in fireworks; the late poor, drivelling, saintly king having expended large sums in bringing this art to perfection.

From the Terreiro do Paco we drove to the great square, in which the palace of the Inquisition is situated. There we found a vast mob, to whom three or four Capuchin preachers were holding forth upon the glories and illuminations of a better world. I should have listened not uninterested to their harangues, which appeared, from the specimen I caught of them, to be full of fire and frenzy, had not the Grand Prior, in perpetual awe of the rheumatism, complained of the night, so we drove home. Every apartment of the house was filled with the thick vapour of wax-torches, which had been set most loyally a blazing. I fumed and fretted and threw open the windows. Away went the Grand Prior, and in came Policarpio, the famous tenor singer, who entertained us with several bravura airs of glib and surprising volubility, before supper and during it, in a style equally professional, with many private anecdotes of the _haute n.o.blesse_, his princ.i.p.al employers, not infinitely to their advantage.

I longed, in return, to have enlarged a little upon the adventures of the holy crows, but prudently repressed my inclination. It would ill-become a person so well treated as I had been by the crow-fanciers, to handle such subjects with any degree of levity.

LETTER x.x.xI.

Rambles in the Valley of Collares.--Elysian scenery. Song of a young female peasant.--Rustic hospitality.--Interview with the Prince of Brazil[20] in the plains of Cascais.--Conversation with His Royal Highness.--Return to Ramalhao.

Oct. 19th, 1787.

My health improves every day. The clear exhilarating weather we now enjoy calls forth the liveliest sense of existence. I ride, walk, and climb, as long as I please, without fatiguing myself. The valley of Collares affords me a source of perpetual amus.e.m.e.nt. I have discovered a variety of paths which lead through chesnut copses and orchards to irregular green spots, where self-sown bays and citron-bushes hang wild over the rocky margin of a little river, and drop their fruit and blossoms into the stream. You may ride for miles along the bank of this delightful water, catching endless perspectives of flowery thickets, between the stems of poplar and walnut. The scenery is truly elysian, and exactly such as poets a.s.sign for the resort of happy spirits.

The mossy fragments of rock, grotesque pollards, and rustic bridges you meet with at every step, recall Savoy and Switzerland to the imagination; but the exotic cast of the vegetation, the vivid green of the citron, the golden fruitage of the orange, the blossoming myrtle, and the rich fragrance of a turf, embroidered with the brightest-coloured and most aromatic flowers, allow me without a violent stretch of fancy to believe myself in the garden of the Hesperides, and to expect the dragon under every tree. I by no means like the thoughts of abandoning these smiling regions, and have been twenty times on the point this very day of revoking the orders I have given for my journey.

Whatever objections I may have had to Portugal seem to vanish, since I have determined to leave it; for such is the perversity of human nature, that objects appear the most estimable precisely at the moment when we are going to lose them.

There was this morning a mild radiance in the sunbeams, and a balsamic serenity in the air, which infused that voluptuous listlessness, that desire of remaining imparadised in one delightful spot, which, in cla.s.sical fictions, was supposed to render those who had tasted the lotos forgetful of country, of friends, and of every tie. My feelings were not dissimilar, I loathed the idea of moving away.

Though I had entered these beautiful orchards soon after sunrise, the clocks of some distant conventual churches had chimed hour after hour before I could prevail upon myself to quit the spreading odoriferous bay-trees under which I had been lying. If shades so cool and fragrant invited to repose, I must observe that never were paths better calculated to tempt the laziest of beings to a walk, than those which opened on all sides, and are formed of a smooth dry sand, bound firmly together, composing a surface as hard as gravel.

These level paths wind about amongst a labyrinth of light and elegant fruit-trees; almond, plum, and cherry, something like the groves of Tonga-taboo, as represented in Cook's voyages; and to increase the resemblance, neat cane fences and low open sheds, thatched with reeds, appear at intervals, breaking the horizontal lines of the perspective.

I had now lingered and loitered away pretty nearly the whole morning, and though, as far as scenery could authorize and climate inspire, I might fancy myself an inhabitant of elysium, I could not pretend to be sufficiently ethereal to exist without nourishment. In plain English, I was extremely hungry. The pears, quinces, and oranges which dangled above my head, although fair to the eye, were neither so juicy nor gratifying to the palate, as might have been expected from their promising appearance.

Being considerably

More than a mile immersed within the wood,[21]

and not recollecting by which clue of a path I could get out of it, I remained at least half-an-hour deliberating which way to turn myself.

The sheds and enclosures I have mentioned were put together with care and even nicety, it is true, but seemed to have no other inhabitants than flocks of bantams, strutting about and destroying the eggs and hopes of many an insect family. These glistening fowls, like their brethren described in Anson's voyages, as animating the profound solitudes of the island of Tinian, appeared to have no master.

At length, just as I was beginning to wish myself very heartily in a less romantic region, I heard the loud, though not unmusical, tones of a powerful female voice, echoing through the arched green avenues; presently, a stout ruddy young peasant, very picturesquely attired in brown and scarlet, came hoydening along, driving a mule before her, laden with two enormous panniers of grapes. To ask for a share of this luxuriant load, and to compliment the fair driver, was instantaneous on my part, but to no purpose. I was answered by a sly wink, "We all belong to Senhor Jose Dias, whose corral, or farm-yard, is half a league distant. There, Senhor, if you follow that road, and don't puzzle yourself by straying to the right or left, you will soon reach it, and the bailiff, I dare say, will be proud to give you as many grapes as you please. Good morning, happy days to you! I must mind my business."

Seating herself between the tantalizing panniers, she was gone in an instant, and I had the good luck to arrive straight at the wicket of a rude, dry wall, winding up and down several bushy slopes in a wild irregular manner. If the outside of this enclosure was rough and unpromising, the interior presented a most cheering scene of rural opulence. Droves of cows and goats milking; ovens, out of which huge cakes of savoury bread had just been taken; ranges of beehives, and long pillared sheds, entirely tapestried with purple and yellow muscadine grapes, half candied, which were hung up to dry. A very good-natured, cla.s.sical-look-magister pecorum, followed by two well-disciplined, though savage-eyed dogs, whom the least glance of their master prevented from barking, gave me a hearty welcome, and with genuine hospitality not only allowed me the free range of his domain, but set whatever it produced in the greatest perfection before me. A contest took place between two or three curly-haired, chubby-faced children, who should be first to bring me walnuts fresh from the sh.e.l.l, bowls of milk, and cream-cheeses, made after the best of fas.h.i.+ons, that of the province of Alemtejo.

I found myself so abstracted from the world in this retirement, so perfectly transported back some centuries into primitive patriarchal times, that I don't recollect having ever enjoyed a few hours of more delightful calm. "Here," did I say to myself, "am I out of the way of courts and ceremonies, and commonplace visitations, or salutations, or gossip." But, alas! how vain is all one thinks or says to one's self nineteen times out of twenty.

Whilst I was blessing my stars for this truce to the irksome bustle of the life I had led ever since her Majesty's arrival at Cintra, a loud hallooing, the cracking of whips, and the tramping of horses, made me start up from the snug corner in which I had established myself, and dispelled all my soothing visions. Luis de Miranda, the colonel of the Cascais regiment, an intimate confidant and favourite of the Prince of Brazil, broke in upon me with a thousand (as he thought) obliging reproaches, for having deserted Ramalhao the very morning he had come on purpose to dine with me, and to propose a ride after dinner to a particular point of the Cintra mountains, which commands, he a.s.sured me, such a prospect as I had not yet been blessed with in Portugal. "It is not even now," said he, "too late. I have brought your horses along with me, whom I found fretting and stamping under a great tree at the entrance of these foolish lanes. Come, get into your stirrups for G.o.d's sake, and I will answer for your thinking yourself well repaid by the scene I shall disclose to you."

As I was doomed to be disturbed and talked out of the elysium in which I had been lapped for these last seven or eight hours, it was no matter in what position, whether on foot or on horseback; I therefore complied, and away we galloped. The horses were remarkably sure-footed, or else, I think, we must have rolled down the precipices; for our road,

"If road it could be call'd where road was none,"

led us by zigzags and short cuts over steeps and acclivities about three or four leagues, till reaching a heathy desert, where a solitary cross staring out of a few weather-beaten bushes, marked the highest point of this wild eminence, one of the most expansive prospects of sea, and plain, and distant mountains, I ever beheld, burst suddenly upon me, rendered still more vast, aerial, and indefinite, by the visionary, magic vapour of the evening sun.

After enjoying a moment or two the general effect, I began tracing out the princ.i.p.al objects in the view, as far, that is to say, as they could be traced, through the medium of the intense glowing haze. I followed the course of the Tagus, from its entrance till it was lost in the low estuaries beyond Lisbon. Cascais appeared with its long reaches of wall and bomb-proof casemates like a Moorish town, and by the help of a gla.s.s I distinguished a tall palm lifting itself above a cl.u.s.ter of white buildings.

"Well," said I, to my conductor, "this prospect has certainly charms worth seeing; but not sufficient to make me forget that it is high time to get home and refresh ourselves." "Not so fast," was the answer, "we have still a great deal more to see."

Having acquired, I can hardly tell why or wherefore, a sheep-like habit of following wherever he led, I spurred after him down a rough declivity, thick strewn with rolling stones and pebbles. At the bottom of this descent, a dreary sun-burnt plain extended itself far and wide.

Whilst we dismounted and halted a few minutes to give our horses breath, I could not help observing, that the view we were now contemplating but ill-rewarded the risk of breaking our necks in riding down such rapid declivities. He smiled, and asked me whether I saw nothing at all interesting in the prospect. "Yes," said I, "a sort of caravan I perceive, about a quarter of a mile off, is by no means uninteresting; that confused group of people in scarlet, with gleaming arms and sumpter-mules, and those striped awnings stretched from ruined walls, present exactly that kind of scenery I should expect to meet with in the neighbourhood of Grand Cairo." "Come then," said he, "it is time to clear up this mystery, and tell you for what purpose we have taken such a long and fatiguing ride. The caravan which strikes you as being so very picturesque, is composed of the attendants of the Prince of Brazil, who has been pa.s.sing the whole day upon a shooting-party, and is just at this moment taking a little repose beneath yonder awnings. It was by his desire I brought you here, for I have his commands to express his wishes of having half-an-hour's conversation with you, un.o.bserved, and in perfect incognito. Walk on as if you were collecting plants or taking sketches, I will apprize his royal highness, and you will meet as it were by chance, and without any form. No one shall be near enough to hear a word you say to each other, for I will take my station at the distance of at least one hundred paces, and keep off all spies and intruders."

I did as I was directed. A little door in the ruined wall, against which an awning was fixed, opened, and there appeared a young man of rather a prepossessing figure, fairer and ruddier than most of his countrymen, who advanced towards me with a very pleasant engaging countenance, moved his hat in a dignified graceful manner, and after insisting upon my being covered, began addressing himself to me with great precipitation, in a most fluent lingua-franca, half Italian and half Portuguese. This jargon is very prevalent at the Ajuda[22] palace, where Italian singers are in much higher request and fas.h.i.+on than persons of deeper tone and intellect.

The first question his royal highness honoured me with was, whether I had visited his cabinet of instruments. Upon my answering in the affirmative, and that the apparatus appeared to me extremely perfect, and in admirable order, he observed, "The arrangement is certainly good, for one of my particular friends, a very learned man, has made it; but notwithstanding the high price I have paid, your Ramsdens and Dollonds have treated themselves more generously than me. I believe," continued his royal highness, "according to what the Duke d'Alafoens has repeatedly a.s.sured me, I am conversing with a person who has no weak, blind prejudices, in favour of his country, and who sees things as they are, not as they have been, or as they ought to be. That commercial greediness the English display in every transaction has cost us dear in more than one particular."

He then ran over the ground Pombal had so often trodden bare, both in his state papers and in various publications which had been promulgated during his administration, and I soon perceived of what school his royal highness was a disciple.

"We deserve all this," continued he, "and worse, for our tame acquiescence in every measure your cabinet dictates; but no wonder, oppressed and debased as we are, by ponderous, useless inst.i.tutions.

When there are so many drones in a hive, it is in vain to look for honey. Were you not surprised, were you not shocked, at finding us so many centuries behind the rest of Europe?"

I bowed, and smiled. This spark of approbation induced, I believe, his royal highness to blaze forth into a flaming encomium upon certain reforms and purifications which were carrying on in Brabant, under the auspices of his most sacred apostolic Majesty Joseph the Second. "I have the happiness," continued the Prince, "to correspond not unfrequently with this enlightened sovereign. The Duke d'Alafoens, who has likewise the advantage of communicating with him, never fails to give me the detail of these salutary proceedings. When shall we have sufficient manliness to imitate them!"

Though I bowed and smiled again, I could not resist taking the liberty of observing that such very rapid and vigorous measures as those his imperial Majesty had resorted to, were more to be admired than imitated; that people who had been so long in darkness, if too suddenly broken in upon by a stream of effulgence, were more likely to be blinded than enlightened; and that blows given at random by persons whose eyes were closed were dangerous, and might fall heaviest perhaps in directions very opposite to those for which they were intended. This was rather bold, and did not seem to please the novice in boldness.

After a short pause, which allowed him, at least, an opportunity of taking breath, he looked steadily at me, and perceiving my countenance arrayed in the best expression of admiration I could throw into it, resumed the thread of his philosophical discourse, and even condescended to detail some very singular and, as they struck me, most perilous projects. Continuing to talk on with an increased impetus (like those whose steps are accelerated by running down hill) he dropped some vague hints of measures that filled me not only with surprise, but with a sensation approaching to horror. I bowed, but I could not smile. My imagination, which had caught the alarm at the extraordinary nature of the topics he was discoursing upon, conjured up a train of appalling images, and I asked myself more than once whether I was not under the influence of a distempered dream.

Being too much engaged in listening to himself to notice my confusion, he worked as hard as a pioneer in clearing away the rubbish of ages, entered minutely and not unlearnedly into the ancient jurisprudence and maxims of his country, its relations with foreign powers, and the rank from whence it had fallen in modern times, to be attributed in a great measure, he observed, to a blind and mistaken reliance upon the selfish politics of our predominant island. Although he did not spare my country, he certainly appeared not over partial to his own. He painted its military defects and priest-ridden policy in vivid colours. In short, this part of our discourse was a "_deploratio Lusitanicae Gentis_," full as vehement as that which the celebrated Damien a Goes, to show his fine Latin and fine humanity, poured forth some centuries ago over the poor wretched Laplanders.

Not approving in any degree the tendency of all this display, I most heartily prayed it might end. Above an hour had pa.s.sed since it began, and flattered as I was by the protraction of so condescending a conference, I could not help thinking that these fountains of honour are fountains of talk and not of mercy; they flow over, if once set a going, without pity or moderation. Persons in supreme stations, whom no one ventures to contradict, run on at a furious rate. You frequently flatter yourself they are exhausted; but you flatter yourself in vain. Sometimes indeed, by way of variety, they contradict themselves, and then the debate is carried on between self and self, to the desperation of their subject auditors, who, without being guilty of a word in reply, are involved in the same penalty us the most captious disputant. This was my case. I scarcely uttered a syllable after my first unsuccessful essay; but thousands of words were nevertheless lavished upon me, and innumerable questions proposed and answered by the questioner with equal rapidity.

In return for the honour of being admitted to this monological dialogue, I kept bowing and nodding; and towards the close of the conference, contrived to smile again pretty decently. His royal highness, I learned afterwards, was satisfied with my looks and gestures, and even bestowed a brevet upon me of a great deal more erudition than I possessed or pretended to.

The sun set, the dews fell, the Prince retired, Louis de Miranda followed him, and I remounted my horse with an indigestion of sounding phrases, and the most confirmed belief that "_the church was in danger_."

Tired and exhausted, I threw myself on my sofa the moment I reached Ramalhao; but the agitation of my spirits would not allow me any repose.

I swallowed some tea with avidity, and driving to the palace, evocated the archbishop confessor, who had been locked up above half-an-hour in his interior cabinet. To him I related all that had pa.s.sed at this unsought, unexpected interview. The consequences in time developed themselves.

LETTER x.x.xII.

Convent of Boa Morte.--Emaciated priests.--Austerity of the Order.--Contrite personages.--A _nouveau riche_.--His house.--Walk on the veranda of the palace at Belem.--Train of attendants at dinner.--Portuguese gluttony.--Black dose of legendary superst.i.tion.--Terrible denunciations.--A dreary evening.

Nov. 9th, 1787.

M---- and his princ.i.p.al almoner, a renowned missionary, and one of the most eloquent preachers in her Majesty's dominions, were at my door by ten, waiting to take me with them to the convent of Boa Morte. This is a true Golgotha, a place of many skulls, for its inhabitants, though they live, move, and have a sort of being, are little better than skeletons.

The priest who officiated appeared so emaciated and cadaverous, that I could hardly have supposed he would have had strength sufficient to elevate the chalice. It did not, however, fall from his hands, and having finished his ma.s.s, a second phantom tottered forth and began another. From the pictures and images of more than ordinary ghastliness which cover the chapels and cloisters, and from the deep contrition apparent in the tears, gestures, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of the faithful who resort to them, I fancy no convent in Lisbon can be compared with this for austerity and devotion.

M---- shook all over with piety, and so did his companion, whose knees are become h.o.r.n.y with frequent kneelings, and who, if one is to believe Verdeil, will end his days in a hermitage, or go mad, or perhaps both.

He pretends, too, that it is this grey-beard that has added new fuel to the flame of M----'s devotion, and that by mutually encouraging each other, they will soon produce fruits worthy of Bedlam, if not of Paradise. To be sure, this father may boast a conspicuously devout turn, and a most resolute manner of thumping himself; but he must not be too vain. In Lisbon there are at least fifty or sixty thousand good souls, who, without having travelled so far, thump full as sonorously as he.

This morning, at Boa Morte, one shrivelled sinner remained the whole time the ma.s.ses lasted with outstretched arms, in the shape and with all the inflexible stiffness of an old-fas.h.i.+oned branched candlestick.