Selecione uma frase portuguesa para revelar o apoio em inglês.
Toque numa frase portuguesa para revelar o apoio em inglês; toque novamente ou fora da frase para o fechar.
Com o teclado, coloque o foco numa frase ou ative-a. Prima Escape para fechar o apoio em inglês.
On Friday morning, Cerveira Lobo set off for Braga with Zeferino. They intended to remain in the city until dawn on Saturday and then leave for Póvoa de Lanhoso. They carried the three still-undelivered contos, converted into pounds and divided between their two pockets. A servant accompanied them in an old livery brightened with blue, stiff boots and a leather hat. All three had blunderbusses fastened to their saddlebows. They went to rest and dine at the Dois Amigos inn. Cerveira displayed a new glossy coat, a cambric cravat and a shirtfront so heavily starched that it stuck out between the lapels of his velvet waistcoat. His wide trousers narrowed at the ankles, while his new boots creaked and the large rosettes on his spurs jingled like something in a barracks. His hat had springs that made the crown leap up and, according to Zeferino, it looked like a pantomime prop.
At four o'clock, the nobleman of Quadros and the mason sat down at the communal table. That nobleman was Cerveira Lobo himself, and the mason was Zeferino. Braga already knew that Cerveira was there, for he had not left his manor at Vermoim since 1835. Some cousins visited him, and Legitimist families, especially elderly ladies, sent him notes. Zeferino said that so much ceremony made him uncomfortable and mocked the age of those ladies. Cerveira whispered about his old youthful adventures in Braga and laughed with a vanity that was already out of date. As they began eating the roast, an unnamed lieutenant from the 8th Infantry Regiment came in. The officer told a friend that a prisoner from Póvoa de Lanhoso had just arrived at the Civil Governor's Office. He said that the man claimed to be Dom Miguel and that, according to a royalist who had seen the real king in Rome three years earlier, he looked very like him.
Cerveira rose in indiscreet astonishment and stared at the officer, who watched him with ironic curiosity. Every eye turned towards the man with the respectable beard, motionless and trembling. 'Is that man who arrived under arrest really Dom Miguel?' Cerveira asked. 'He says he is, but we shall see what is discovered at the Civil Governor's Office,' the lieutenant replied. A Latin teacher remarked with a pedantic smile that three false Dom Sebastiãos had appeared in the absence of the real one. Cerveira gave him a sidelong look and left the table, followed by a deeply uneasy Zeferino. 'Everything is lost!' the nobleman lamented. He was indignant that the supposed king was imprisoned while Minho failed to rise and free him. He wanted to see him and, if possible, speak to him. He boasted that within three days he would enter Braga with ten thousand men and destroy the prison. He made the crown of his spring-loaded hat leap up and went out into the street, puffing with rage.
Campo de Santa Ana looked like a country fair. The narrator saw two Bragas gathered there, each with its own politics and society. The loyal, conservative Braga was full of noblemen, great landowners, canons, hatters and members of the lower clergy. Liberal Braga, described as much weaker, relied on the 8th Infantry Regiment, graduates, officials, small shopkeepers and teachers. The catalogue mixes respectable and ridiculous figures while ironically anticipating later military careers. Cerveira dominated the crowd with his beard, his glossy clothes and the metallic clatter of his spurs. The leading royalist gentlemen made way for him and formed around him the heart of that great Legitimist community. Cerveira asked them whether the prisoner was the king, but some shrugged and others gestured their denial. 'Then you should know that he is!' he insisted with authority. Manuel de Magalhães murmured to Henrique Freire that he should be allowed to talk, since he was an idiot. Bernardo de Barros, a former cavalry captain, politely assured him that the real king would never be within reach of the crowd. Meanwhile, fashionable young men drew near to amuse themselves at Cerveira's expense.
Soon afterwards, a whirl of people formed outside the Civil Governor's Office. The soldiers drove the crowd back with the less than gentle persuasion of their gunstocks. The escort formed up and the prisoner came out with his head raised and a fearless air. Cerveira stared at him with painful anxiety. He thought the man looked like Dom Miguel and was almost ready to swear that it was him. At that moment, a major from Vila Verde who was in the group recognised the prisoner. 'Look who it is, what a great scoundrel!' the major exclaimed contemptuously. When asked who he was, he replied that this was Veríssimo, a former quartermaster sergeant in his company. He added that Veríssimo had served with Remexido and fled Messines with the guerrillas' pay. Cerveira leant towards the mason and asked in his ear whether he had heard. 'I am astonished!' Zeferino murmured. Cerveira reminded him in alarm that they had been on the point of losing three contos. Zeferino answered with a brief curse that concentrated all his anguish.
A few minutes later, Father Rocha faced Cerveira and drew him aside. 'Are you undeceived now, my friend?' he asked. Rocha explained that, in response to Cerveira's trust, he had made it his duty to protect him. He had saved him from the theft of three contos and the shame of being deceived by an impostor. According to Rocha, the best service to the real Dom Miguel was to hand over to justice anyone who used his name to rob the prince's friends. He told Cerveira to return home and wait until he was told to draw his sword. Cerveira embraced him and repeated that honourable friends still existed. Veríssimo did in fact enter Braga prison. At dawn the following day, he was transferred to the Relação do Porto.
After this transfer, the narrative goes back many years to explain who Veríssimo was and how the fraud began. Everything that follows in this recollection happened before the arrest. The real name he had given at the Civil Governor's Office was Veríssimo Borges Camelo da Mesquita. He had been born in 1806 at Alvações do Corgo in the Douro. His father, Norberto Borges Camelo, was known in old age as Norberto das Facadas and served as chief bailiff in Vila Real. Some connected the nickname with the story that he had stabbed his wife out of jealousy. Others said the nickname came from the three stab wounds he had received while surrounding bandits at Campeã. The origin of the nickname remains uncertain, although it is certain that the gang defeated the officers and Norberto returned to town on a stretcher. Norberto owned a seventeenth-century house with a coat of arms at Alvações and claimed descent from Bishop Dom João Camelo. He recited his genealogy and parchments in a monotonous tone, often failing to notice that magistrates invited him to do so in mockery. Veríssimo had inherited the surname Mesquita from the mother he had never known. Later, the narrator states that Norberto caught her committing adultery, mortally wounded her with a knife and fled with Junot's troops. When he returned with the Count of Ega's regiment, the affair had already been forgotten.
In 1827, Veríssimo was studying Humanities at Coimbra in preparation for Law and was a diligent, serious student. In 1828, he underwent a sudden political change and became a cudgel-wielding supporter of the ruling party. He even wanted to attack students imprisoned at Cartaxo with a knife, and abandoned both study and his former good conduct. In 1829, he left the University and enlisted in the infantry. During the siege of Porto, he was an aspiring sergeant and showed courage. A Liberal sortie left him wounded in one leg, but he refused discharge and a pension despite being left with a slight limp. He was a handsome man, with an oval face, remarkable eyes and a slightly aquiline nose. People said that he was the living image of Dom Miguel, improved even by the misfortune of his limp. After the convention, he returned to Alvações and found his father sad and short of money. The small wine farm was not enough, and Norberto, removed from office and disliked as a thief, depended on his sister Águeda. Veríssimo wanted to return to the army, but his father refused permission because he considered it disgraceful to serve the man he called the usurper. Norberto cited the ancient Cortes of Lamego, and his son replied that he would rather find the modern hams of Lamego at home.
His father boasted that there was not a single Liberal in the Camelo family and threatened to curse any son who betrayed throne and altar. Aunt Águeda also had little, for between 1828 and 1833 she had spent six thousand cruzados on celebrations of Dom Miguel's birthdays and victories. She had a Te Deum sung at Alvações whenever news arrived of another royalist victory. The narrator jokes that, if so many hymns were to be believed, the royalists entered Porto every fortnight only to leave by one side and return by the other. Águeda herself was beginning to suspect that the God of Afonso Henriques had changed sides. Even so, she took Veríssimo in to prevent him becoming a Liberal and let him live comfortably, dividing his time between his flute and the wine cellar.
As he had already passed examinations in Latin and Logic, she was advised to direct him towards the priesthood. Veríssimo accepted the idea after observing the peaceful and comfortable lives of several parish priests. An abbot related to him had a litter, animals, dogs and many guests, and other priests with smaller incomes also seemed enviable. The narrator satirises both Veríssimo's calculation and the family, which excused clerical weakness through genealogies full of prelates' children. Veríssimo wanted to be an abbot, although he privately reserved some far from spiritual ideas about certain members of the flock.
In October 1835, he went to Braga. The text says that he was thirty then, although it also dates his birth to 1806. He found Theology hard to absorb, and went about bored and unhappy. By chance, he met Torcato Nunes Elias, a former sergeant from the same regiment who was studying to become a legal agent. They became inseparable through taverns and brothels, and neither opened his course book again. Águeda continued sending his allowance and asked her nephew when he would celebrate his first Mass.
In 1836, the powerful guerrilla force of José Joaquim de Sousa Reis, known as Remexido, appeared at São Bartolomeu de Messines in the Algarve. The two former sergeants became excited and decided to present themselves to the leader. Veríssimo asked his aunt for a larger sum, claiming that he needed to pay the final expenses of becoming a priest. The old woman sold a vineyard, sent him the proceeds and gave him her blessing. The adventurers left for the Algarve, where the general welcomed them warmly and gave them captains' insignia. In a letter to his father, Veríssimo presented this decision as a heroic destiny. He declared that he could not abandon the defeated sword while a royalist blade still shone in the field. According to the same letter, Remexido would restore Dom Miguel to the throne or be the last man to die in his defence. Veríssimo also said that he and his companion had sworn to fall wherever the general fell, whether the road led to glory or the grave.
The narrator then interrupts Veríssimo's biography to summarise Remexido's rise and fall. He relates that José Joaquim had been born at Estômbar, studied for the priesthood in Faro and shown an aptitude for Theology. Love led him to leave the seminary, marry and become a farmer to support his growing family. Later, political passion drew him into the conflict that divided the Algarve for eighteen years. The account connects his position with the clergy, the persecution of Liberals in 1823, exile in 1826 and his return in support of the absolute king in 1828. After the Duke of Terceira landed on 24 June 1833, Remexido hid in the hills and left his wife and children at Messines. The text relates that the victorious forces beat the family and looted and burnt the house. Remexido attacked Estômbar and managed to reach his family, in a scene the narrator turns into a fierce image of animals defending their young. Later, ill and surrounded by troops, he surrendered rather than allow himself to be killed. The narrator imagines only as a possibility that, in his agony, he may have seen his wife and children before him. Five days later, Remexido was shot by firing squad in Faro.
The regiment in which Veríssimo and Nunes were captains scattered, and the two men fled like the generals whom the narrator ironically calls prudent and brave. The narrator sarcastically reduces the guerrillas' pay to a small sum that would hardly deserve to be called theft. He states that there was no time to pay the troops and that the two men withdrew with the cashbox. That military cashbox is distinct from the three contos that Cerveira and Zeferino still held. The irony continues with the impossible image of the fugitives searching the hills for scattered soldiers to hand them four vinténs a day and the one-vintém allowance for provisions.
After the flight, Veríssimo returned to Alvações and Nunes went to São Gens. Norberto died around that time of a cerebral congestion. Separately, someone said that two political enemies had strangled him in bed, but the account does not confirm that allegation. Águeda received her nephew affectionately, but his father's inheritance was mortgaged and had to be auctioned. After the debts were paid, about nine hundred thousand réis and the house with its coat of arms remained. Nunes wrote from Póvoa that he lived in misery, received only bean broth from his father and was treated like a stray dog. Without clothes or contacts in Braga, he could not train to work as a solicitor. Veríssimo generously invited him to Alvações, clothed him and paid for him to study with Miguelist lawyers in Vila Real. Águeda spent her days weeping between the portrait of her dead husband and the portrait of Dom Miguel, who looked very like her nephew. In the winter of 1840, Águeda died from an indigestion of chestnuts, aggravated by chronic intestinal disease and, in the narrator's irony, by longing for royalty. She left her nephew the house and the badly depleted vineyards, but bequeathed the portrait of Dom Miguel and ten gold coins to the nuns of Santa Clara. In return, they were to light four wax candles on the king's birthday. Veríssimo then lived lavishly, became a local political leader and was known as Captain Veríssimo. He bought a horse and equipment, gambled heavily for two years at the Feira de Santo António in Vila Real, and lost everything. Nunes was already handling legal cases in Póvoa and shared his meagre earnings with his friend despite opposition from the judge and the clerks.
Without owning a foot of land, Veríssimo left Alvações and offered his fine handwriting to a notary at Alijó. As a copyist, he earned three tostões a day and his dinner. According to rumours repeated by the narrator, the notary's wife compared his good looks with her husband's ugliness. The notary dismissed Veríssimo and, it was said, punished his wife as well. Veríssimo then found work as squire to the wealthy captain-major of Murça, a royalist whose Jewish background the narrator marks in the prejudiced language of the period. The narrative attributes feelings for the new squire to the housekeeper, but his employer noticed the situation, paid him generously and sent him away. Back in the Douro, António de Melo, a nobleman of Gouvinhas, appointed him steward of his estates. He lived comfortably and did little work, for the nobleman enjoyed discussing politics with him. A nephew of his employer, known as Malagueta, came to hate him out of jealousy over Libânia de Covas, a striking weaver. When Malagueta advanced on him with a dagger, Veríssimo gave way because he depended on the job and left. Libânia owned gold chains and a few coins, but the narrator describes the source of that money through sexual insinuations and period judgements that should not be taken as certain fact. What is certain is that she followed Veríssimo to Porto in 1844 and continued supporting him. In Miragaia, Veríssimo opened a primary school, but after a month he was already losing patience and kicking his pupils. One of Libânia's toothaches inspired him to become a dentist, and he began training with Pinac in Rua de Santo António. During that training, he met Nunes again at the Tívoli, where Libânia was enjoying the popular amusements.
Nunes had come to ask for money, because his father had died, left the house to his other son, and he had a wife and two children to support. He was thinking of trying his luck in Brazil and working hard if necessary. Veríssimo replied that all he could do was pull out one of his teeth free of charge, and confessed his own difficulties. He said that Libânia had already spent fifteen moedas on him and sold her gold without ever showing him sadness. He wanted to set himself up as a dentist in the provinces, but did not have the twelve thousand réis needed to buy the kit. Nunes promised that the next day he would fetch his wife's gold chain, which weighed three moedas, because he would not ask for it for himself but would ask for it for his friend. The chain is only promised: this part of the story does not show the wife handing it over or the men using it. Still in good humour, Nunes hoped that the town chosen by the new dentist would have more toothaches than he could treat. They left cheerfully, and the narrator recognises a true friendship between those two strange figures. He compares them to two shipwrecked men each trying to offer the other the same plank, and finds in them, amid what he calls the social sewers, the loyalty of Pylades and Orestes.
That evening, Nunes had supper with Veríssimo and Libânia in their poor house in Rua da Lada, behind the cathedral. They ate fish, bread and peppers, drank two bottles of cheap wine and remembered their nights in Braga nine years earlier. Libânia declared spiritedly that passions were worth little when the money ran out, but that she would not leave her Veríssimo even at the fifth stabbing. Nunes, who had been thinking in silence, proposed that they should all go to Brazil. When Libânia asked about the money, Nunes promised Veríssimo that, if he agreed, they would have one conto within a month. Veríssimo replied sarcastically that the two bottles had produced a cheap one-conto fantasy. Nunes asked him to listen without joking and gave his word of honour that he was not drunk. Libânia became very attentive, while Veríssimo put his legs on the table, lit a cigar and told his friend to speak.
'Do you know that you look very like Dom Miguel?' Nunes began. Veríssimo called the idea nonsense, but Nunes demanded that he should not interrupt. Before hearing the full explanation, Veríssimo understood the direction of the plan and joked that Nunes wanted to have him acclaimed king. He added ironically that he would sell his rights to the crown to his niece, Dona Maria II, for one conto in order to avoid bloodshed. Nunes lost patience and wanted to leave the conversation until the following day, but Libânia asked that he be allowed to speak. Torcato Nunes then set out his theory for obtaining one conto, answered the objections and eventually convinced Veríssimo. The two men would have to leave for the Alto Minho. Libânia would work at Grainha's looms in Ramalde in return for food, a bed and twelve vinténs a day. Their few pieces of furniture would be sold to a second-hand clothes dealer to provide Veríssimo with a coat, trousers, clean linen, repaired boots and a decent hat.
On Shrove Thursday, Libânia courageously left for Ramalde. Grainha knew the quality of her work from Gouvinhas and had already told her that, whenever she wished to earn an honest living, there would be a place for her in Ramalde. Nunes and Veríssimo travelled together as far as the outskirts of Braga. There, Nunes turned towards his home at Calvos. On Shrove Saturday, Veríssimo left for Póvoa de Lanhoso.