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Simão carried from Viseu to Coimbra a proud certainty of his own valour and recalled the fight at the fountain with pleasure. The narrator compares him to a veteran in a play who wearies his listeners by recounting a hundred victories, but considers the student far more dangerous than that theatrical braggart.
Memories of violence drove Simão towards new exploits, and the restless university world of Coimbra offered him many opportunities. Many young students sympathised with the new theories of liberty, more through intuition and enthusiasm than through rigorous study. The great appeals of the French Revolution had scarcely reached Portugal, although the books of the Encyclopaedists were not entirely unknown. Some young people even accepted the idea of regenerating society through the guillotine, an idea fed by the bloodshed of 1793. At the same time, the manufacturing classes harboured resentment against England and against treaties regarded as ruinous and humiliating. Some thoughtful Portuguese preferred an alliance with France, while many students were driven chiefly by a passion for novelty.
In 1800, António de Araújo de Azevedo, the future Count of Barca, had gone to Madrid and Paris to negotiate Portuguese neutrality. The allied powers rejected the proposals and would not even accept the sixteen million offered to the First Consul. The armies of Spain and France then entered Portuguese territory, and the Duke of Lafões's troops did not engage in such an unequal struggle. Under the Peace of Badajoz, Portugal ceded Olivença to Spain, promised to exclude the English from its ports and paid France an indemnity of several million.
These events increased some people's hatred of Napoleon and led others to celebrate the break with England. Within the pro-French faction, Simão had an influential voice at the university, despite the age of sixteen assigned to him here by the narrative. The names of Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins, victims and executioners of the great revolutionary slaughter, sounded like music to him. Anyone who insulted those men in his presence risked a slap and found Simão's pistols pointed at their face. Simão argued for Portugal to be regenerated through a baptism of blood that would prevent tyranny from raising its head again.
The young man's violence drove away even the companions who had previously applauded his more reasonable principles of liberty. Some denounced him to the Bishop-Count, the University Rector, in order to protect themselves at his expense. One day, Simão was speaking in Sansão Square about ideas of regicide before the few listeners who remained faithful, some of them out of fear. A detachment of guards interrupted the speech, and the speaker tried to resist by reaching for his pistols. The Rector's men knew his strength, disarmed him and took him under guard to the university prison. He was released only six months later, thanks to the persistence of his father's friends and Rita Preciosa's relatives.
After losing the academic year, Simão returned to Viseu, where Domingos received him with threats of expulsion from the family home. His mother interceded more from duty than tenderness and managed to have her son restored to the family table. Within three months, Simão's habits changed astonishingly, although his intensity had not disappeared. He abandoned his former companions, seldom went out and walked either alone or with his youngest sister, his favourite. He sought out the countryside, the trees and dark, deserted places, and on summer nights stayed outdoors until dawn began. Rita Preciosa was astonished by the transformation, and only after five months did Domingos allow Simão to address him.
Simão Botelho was in love, and that single word explains to the narrator the transformation that seemed absurd in a young man of the age assigned to him there. His beloved was Teresa de Albuquerque, a neighbour whom the narrative presents as a wealthy, well-born heiress of fifteen. Simão first saw her from his bedroom window and became determined to love her for ever. Teresa was not indifferent, for she loved him too, with a seriousness that the narrator considers rare at her age.
The narrator loses patience with poets and novelists who always describe a girl's love at fifteen as unique, dangerous and unyielding. Teresa, he cautiously admits, may have been an exception.
Tadeu de Albuquerque, Teresa's father, hated Domingos and the Botelho family because of lawsuits in which the magistrate had ruled against him. Moreover, two of Tadeu's servants had been injured the previous year during the notorious violence at the fountain. By loving Simão against her father's resentment, Teresa showed that her commitment was true and strong. For three months, the young couple saw and spoke to one another through the nearby windows without arousing suspicion in the neighbourhood or either family.
Their shared plan was honourable: Simão would graduate so that he could support Teresa if they lacked other resources. Teresa would wait for her elderly father's death and, once mistress of her own affairs, give Simão the great estate together with her heart.
On the eve of Simão's departure for Coimbra, the two were saying goodbye at their windows when Teresa was suddenly pulled away. On hearing her cries, Simão writhed in his room like a tiger trapped in a cage, unable to help her. He thought of killing himself and spent the night ruled by rage and plans for revenge, a sign that love had not erased his dangerous violence. By morning, however, his blood had cooled and hope returned together with more sensible calculations.
Rita Preciosa saw her son's distraught face and tried to persuade him to delay the journey while he appeared ill. Simão decided to leave, wait for news in Coimbra and return secretly to Viseu to speak to Teresa, since staying might make her situation worse. As he put his foot in the stirrup, he saw an old beggar woman hold out her hand, not merely to ask for alms but to give him a small piece of paper.
A few steps from the house, Simão read Teresa's secret message. 'My father says that he is going to shut me in a convent because of you,' she wrote. 'I shall endure everything for love of you, so do not forget me and you will always find my heart faithful, whether in the convent or in heaven.' 'Go to Coimbra, where you will receive my letters, and in the first I shall tell you under what name you should reply to your poor Teresa.'
In Coimbra, the change in Simão astonished the whole university, for outside classes almost no one saw him. He kept only the sensible companions who advised him and had visited him during his six months in prison, bringing encouragement and resources. He studied fervently to build a reputation and achieve a position that would allow him to support his future wife with dignity.
He entrusted his secret to no one except the long letters he sent to Teresa to relieve the weariness of study. Teresa wrote to him frequently and said she no longer feared the threat of the convent, because she believed her father could not live without her. When he was examined on the difficult subjects of the first year, he answered so well that teachers and fellow students considered him worthy of first prize.
Around that time, Manoel, now a cadet stationed in Porto, obtained leave to study mathematics at the University and went to live with his transformed brother. They lived together only briefly, for Manoel fell in love with an Azorean woman married to another student and fled with her to Lisbon and then Spain.
In February 1803, Simão received from Teresa a letter containing a painful surprise. The immediate cause of that letter belongs to the next chapter, while this one ends by presenting Simão as converted by love to duty, honour, society and God.