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That same day, Domingos ordered his wife and daughters to make ready. The following morning, they would leave Viseu with everything the pack animals could carry. The narrator interrupts the chronology and transcribes a family letter written many years later. The writer is not identified, and the document anticipates events before the narrative returns to the trial.
The woman begins: ‘Fifty-seven years have passed, yet I remember everything as though it were yesterday.’ Their mother told the daughters to prepare their trunks for the journey. They all began to cry, which increased their father's anger. The older sisters quickly fell silent, but the writer of the letter continued. She found the courage to ask her father to let her visit her brother in prison. For that innocent request, she was punished a second time, and harshly. The servant returned from the prison with the dinner: Simão already had furniture and was eating calmly. At that hour, every bell in Viseu was tolling for Baltasar's soul. A beautiful village girl wept beside him; pointing to Mariana, Simão said: ‘This is my family.’ At daybreak the following morning, the family left for Vila Real. Rita wept during the journey; Domingos, furious, left the litter and continued on his daughter's mount.
In Vila Real, domestic quarrels over Simão became constant. Domingos left the family and withdrew alone to the Montezelos estate. Rita wished to join her cousins in Lisbon and seek her son's release. Domingos threatened to prevent her by law from leaving her husband's and daughters' home. Rita wrote to Simão without receiving a reply; years later, the children discovered that Domingos had intercepted every letter. A letter brought from Viseu by a muleteer praised Rita's supposed help. Rita admitted in astonishment that she was not supporting Simão, for he had refused the little help offered. The friend explained that Mariana, a farrier's daughter, lived near the prison and cared for Simão. Mariana said she acted on Rita's orders and at her expense, a protective explanation that did not prove Rita paid for his care. Mariana refused finer dishes from the lady in Viseu because Simão would accept nothing. In Domingos's absence, influential people in Viseu conspired against Simão. Rita begged her relatives in Lisbon for a royal pardon, but Domingos intercepted those letters. Meanwhile, he cultivated the land at Montezelos, surrounded by labourers. To Rita's laments, Domingos replied that justice was not a game and recalled ancient fathers who condemned criminal sons. When Rita asked permission to go to Viseu, Domingos refused and attacked her with furious words.
The letter then moves forward seven months to reveal the result of the proceedings. Simão was sentenced to die on a gallows erected at the scene of the crime. The family closed the windows for eight days, wore mourning, and Rita fell ill. The leading people of Vila Real went to Montezelos to press Domingos to use his influence for his son. Some relatives came from Lisbon to protest against the disgrace that would fall upon the family. Domingos replied: ‘The gallows was not invented only for those who do not know their grandfather's name.’ In his view, bad deeds dishonoured families. Justice disgraced only the person it punished. The venerable great-uncle António da Veiga was eighty-three years old. He said that God had preserved his honourable life almost to its end and that he might have two or three years left. He would not allow his eyes to witness the family's disgrace. Holding a razor to his throat, António threatened to kill himself before Domingos unless he promised to save Simão. Domingos seized his arm, promised that Simão would not be hanged, and prevented the threat from being carried out. The next day, Domingos left for Porto and then for Lisbon. In early March 1805, Simão was transferred to the Porto Court of Appeal prison despite the opposition of Tadeu and Baltasar's sisters.
The narrator suspends the letter, which had anticipated the sentence, the family intervention and the transfer. The narrative now resumes its thread on the day of Simão's trial.
Simão saw the day of his trial arrive without losing his composure. He sat in the murderers' dock without counsel or defence witnesses. He answered the questions with the same lucid calm as at his first examination. Compelled to explain the cause of the crime, he spoke honestly but did not utter Teresa's name. When prosecuting counsel named her, Simão suddenly rose. ‘What is a lady's name doing in this place of infamy and blood?’ he exclaimed. He accused counsel of attacking a woman's reputation without need. ‘My confession is enough to prove the need for the executioner,’ he declared. He told the law to speak and called the prosecutor a villain for not knowing how to accuse without defaming. The judge ordered him to be silent. Simão sat down and murmured: ‘Wretches, all of them!’
The court sentenced him to death by hanging at the place where he had killed Baltasar. At the same moment, a piercing cry was heard among the crowd. Simão turned towards the people and spoke with bitter irony. ‘You will have a fine spectacle, gentlemen: the gallows is the people's only feast.’ He asked them to take away the woman who was weeping. She was the only person for whom his execution would not be an entertainment. João carried Mariana in his arms to the small house beside the prison. At eighteen, Simão returned strong and composed to the prison while he heard the people speak of the execution as though it were a festival. Some asked when he would be executed; others said he was paying for the innocent people hanged by his father. Some said that he had tried to win an heiress with bullets; others criticised noblemen and suggested that, had the victim been poor, Simão would be free. They marvelled that he walked with his head held high and promised that someone would make him lower it. One rumour claimed that the executioner had arrived in hiding with two blades, although no one had seen him and the news came through a long chain of acquaintances. One person intended to take their children because they thought such examples should not be missed. A man boasted of having seen three hangings, but he was reminded that he had nearly killed Amaro Lampreia. He pleaded self-defence, which led another to ask what use such examples were. A friar advised taking the children; someone replied that he merely feared being skinned by the people after skinning them with collections. The people's philosophy made Simão smile, for his spirit remained unafraid.
Back in his room, Simão was told of the legal deadline for an appeal. He replied that he would not appeal and was content with his fate and at peace with justice. He then asked about Mariana. The gaoler sent for her, but it was João da Cruz who appeared, weeping. João lamented that he was losing his daughter. Mariana was beside herself, spoke of the gallows and begged to be killed first. Simão felt an agonising pain and suddenly understood that Mariana loved him unto death. The narrator allows only as a possibility that, for a moment, Teresa's image receded from his heart. Simão might have imagined Teresa as a serene angel beside her Creator. Mariana, however, would appear as the symbol of a torment that was destroying her because her love was unrequited. One was dying, loved; the other suffered without hearing the word ‘love’ from Simão, receiving only cold expressions of gratitude. Then that man of iron wept tears worthy of Mariana's sorrows.
Simão asked João to care for his daughter and leave him, for he was strong and well. He told him to console Mariana, take her away from Viseu and bring her home. Simão wished two sisters to remain in the world to mourn him. The shortness of his life made future care unnecessary; within days he would enter the condemned prisoners' chapel, and it was better that Mariana should not know. João found Mariana on the floor, her face injured, laughing and weeping, unable to control herself. João had to take her home bound and entrusted Simão's support to someone else. The narrator then goes back in time. During the seven months before the sentence, Mariana entered the prison freely and rarely left Simão alone. She sewed while he wrote, or attended to the cleanliness and order of the room. When Simão fell ill, Mariana wrote his name a hundred times, often erased by her tears. Seven months passed in this way, without either of them speaking or hearing the word ‘love’. Mariana spent her nights in prayer, work and trips home to visit her father.
After João took her away, Mariana never again crossed the prison's iron door. That door measured out his air, as though the honour of suffocation were reserved for the gallows rope. When he summoned Teresa's image, he also saw Mariana beside her, both of them weeping. He would then leap from the bed and grip the thick window bars tightly. He thought of smashing his head against the iron, but did not turn the impulse into a suicide attempt. No hope on earth, in heaven or in divine light held him back. The angel of pity had seemed to live in Mariana, who had now lost control of herself. Thus it was not hope in God or humanity that saved Simão from suicide. It was pride, which called him a coward for wishing to die when there was no longer any hope of life. For him, the gallows would be a triumph at the end of a path of honour.