LETTER XXIII.

High mass.--Garden of the Viscount Ponte de Lima.--Leave Mafra.--An accident.--Return to Cintra.--My saloon.--Beautiful view from it.

August 28th, 1787.

I was half asleep, half awake, when the sonorous bells of the convent struck my ears. The Marquis and Don Pedro’s voices in earnest conversation with the Capitan Mor in the adjoining chamber, completely roused me. We swallowed our coffee in haste; the Grand Prior reluctantly left his pillow, and accompanied us to high mass. The monks once more exerted their efforts to prevail on us to dine with them; but we remained inflexible, and to avoid their importunities hastened away, as soon as mass was ended, to the Viscount Ponte de Lima’s gardens, where the deep shade of the bay and ilex skreened us from the excessive heat of the sun.

The Marquis, seating himself by me near one of those clear and copious fountains with which this magnificent Italian-looking garden is refreshed and enlivened, entered into a most serious and semi-official discourse about my stay in Portugal, and the means which were projecting in a very high quarter to render it not only pleasant to myself, but of some importance to many others.

* * * * *

I felt relieved when the appearance of Don Pedro and his uncle, who had been walking to the end of an immensely long avenue of pines, warded off a conversation that began to press hard upon me. We returned altogether to the Capitan Mor’s, and found dinner ready.

Both Don Pedro and myself were sorry to leave Mafra, and should have had no objection to another race along the cloisters and dormitories with the lay-brother. The evening was bright and clear, and the azure tints of the distant sea inexpressibly lovely. We drove with a tumultuous rapidity over the rough-paved roads, that the Marquis and I could hardly hear a word we said to each other. Don Pedro had mounted his horse. Verdeil, who preceded us in the carinho, seemed to outstrip the winds. His mule, one of the most fiery and gigantic of her species, excited by repeated floggings and the shout of a hulking Portuguese postilion, perched up behind the carriage, galloped at an ungovernable rate; and at about a league from the rocks of Cintra, thought proper to jerk out its drivers into the midst of some bushes at the foot of a lofty bank, nearly perpendicular, where they still remained sprawling when we passed by.

Verdeil hobbled up to us, and pointed to the carinho in the ditch below. Except a slight contusion in the knee, he had received no hurt. I exclaimed immediately, that his escape was miraculous, and that, doubtless, St. Anthony had some hand in it. My friend, who has always the horrors of heresy before his eyes, whispered me that the devil had saved him this time, but might not be so favourably disposed another.

It was not half-past five, when we reached Cintra. The Marchioness, the Abade, and the children, were waiting our arrival.

Feeling my head in a whirl, and my ideas as much jolted and jumbled as my body, I returned home just before it fell dark, to enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted calm. The scenery of my ample saloon, its air of seclusion, its silence, seemed to breathe a momentary tranquillity over my spirits. The mat smoothly laid down, and formed of the finest and most glossy straw, assumed by candlelight a delightful, soft, and harmonious colour. It looked so cool and glistening that I stretched myself upon it. There did I lie supine, contemplating the serene summer-sky, and the moon rising slowly from behind the brow of a shrubby hill. A faint breeze blowing aside the curtains, discovered the summit of the woods in the garden, and beyond, a wide expanse of country, terminated by plains of sea and hazy promontories.