Select a Portuguese sentence to reveal its English support.
Tap a Portuguese sentence to reveal its English support; tap it again or tap outside to close it.
With a keyboard, focus or activate a sentence. Press Escape to dismiss its English support.
The next day, Tadeu de Albuquerque announced himself at the Monchique porter's lodge. His cousin, the first lady to receive him in the parlour, was wiping away tears of joy. ‘Do not think I am weeping from distress, cousin; our angel may yet be saved,’ said the abbess. That morning, she had seen Teresa walking unaided through the dormitories. She attributed the improvement to two saints within the enclosure and to the nuns who prayed to them. If it continued, she hoped Heaven would keep Teresa there for years. Tadeu appeared pleased, but wanted to take her to Viseu at once because he considered the air there healthier. The abbess warned that Teresa could not endure such a long journey: the day before, they had expected to find her dead. She asked him for a few months and would accept the departure only afterwards. Tadeu replied that the greater recklessness was keeping Teresa in Porto, where Baltasar's killer must already be. According to Tadeu's hostile account, the chief magistrate of Viseu had defended his son and secured acceptance of a late appeal. He also accused him of securing Simão's transfer to Porto prison. Tadeu was seeking confirmation of the death sentence and, while Simão remained in Porto, refused to leave Teresa there. ‘You are her father, and I am only a relative,’ the abbess replied, yielding at first. Tadeu asked to see Teresa, and the abbess told him to wait at the first grille on the right while she fetched her.
On learning that her father awaited her, Teresa lost her healthy colour, and her aunt offered to postpone the visit. ‘It must be done; I shall go, aunt,’ Teresa decided. At the sight of her, Tadeu trembled and turned pale; had he not known she was his daughter, he might not have recognised her. Moved, he asked why she had not revealed her condition; Teresa smiled and said that her friends exaggerated. Tadeu asked whether she had the strength to go with him to Viseu. ‘I do not even have the strength to tell you briefly that I shall not return to Viseu,’ Teresa replied. When he asked whether her health depended on the journey, Teresa replied: ‘It depends on the opposite; here I shall live or die.’ With feigned gentleness, Tadeu said that he would take her away if the air were harmful, for it was his duty to guide her and set her unhappy lot right. ‘It has already been put right, Father; death mends every error in life,’ Teresa replied. Tadeu wanted her alive and ordered her to regain strength, promising a miraculous recovery after half a day's travel. ‘I shall not go, Father,’ Teresa repeated, and Tadeu thrust his hands, trembling with rage, against the grille.
‘These iron bars separate us for ever,’ Teresa declared. Tadeu invoked the law and his rights as a father, reminding Teresa that she was only eighteen. Teresa knew her own age, but not the law, and that ignorance did not trouble her. If a violent hand tried to tear her from that place, it would find a corpse; afterwards, they could do whatever they wished. While she could still say that she would not go, she swore to her father that she would not. Tadeu roared that Teresa already knew of the ‘murderer's’ presence in Porto, and she confirmed it. When her father accused her of shamelessness, Teresa interrupted him because she felt ill. She asked permission to leave and told him to take his revenge as best he could. Her glory would be a gallows beside Simão's, a fatalistic image of dying with him rather than an immediate act. Teresa left, leaned against the wall almost fainting and gently pushed her aunt and Constança away when they tried to support her. ‘There is no need; I am well, and these blows give life,’ she murmured to her aunt. She then walked alone, with unsteady steps, towards her cell.
Tadeu hammered repeatedly at the door with ridiculous fury, frightening the portress and the nuns. The abbess returned to the parlour and sternly asked what he was doing. ‘I want Teresa brought outside,’ Tadeu replied. When the abbess asked who could expel Teresa, Tadeu invoked a father's will and rights. The abbess urged prudence and asked whether Teresa refused to leave; Tadeu confirmed it and repeated that he wanted her outside. She asked him to wait while they tried persuasion, for they would not drag Teresa outside. Tadeu threatened to fetch her himself and ordered them to open the doors. The abbess replied that the doors required permission from a higher authority and that the Rule would not be broken for a rancorous passion. She told him to let that frenzy subside and return when he could agree upon something worthy of them all. Tadeu gestured, accused the nuns of conspiracy and forbade further letters from the man he called a killer. ‘I believe Teresa has never received letters from killers, nor will she,’ the abbess replied, rejecting that label. Tadeu announced that he would watch the convent and demanded Constança's expulsion, for she had been instructed to inform him but had remained silent. The abbess suggested that Constança had nothing to report; Tadeu rejected the explanation and demanded her immediate expulsion. The abbess refused the injustice: Tadeu could send another maid, but Constança wished to stay and other ladies wanted her services. Tadeu invoked the devil and bounded away, rage distorting his face and leaving sweat and blood in his sunken eyes.
The police intendant rejected Tadeu's request to have Teresa handed over to him because it was not in the proper legal form. He also refused to prevent Simão from sending letters, for there were no grounds connected to an investigation. Tadeu took his demands to the chief magistrate of Porto, Domingos's friend and a different official from the chief magistrate of Viseu. The chief magistrate of Porto dismissed Tadeu irritably and said that senseless old age deserved laughter as much as pity. Almost beside himself, Tadeu roamed the streets without finding a course worthy of his lineage and vengeance. The next day, he found the appeal court judges more inclined to clemency than to justice. One of them was Mourão Mosqueira, a childhood friend of Rita Preciosa, who had asked him for help.
Mourão asked how many deaths Tadeu might have caused if anyone had opposed his rage, so close was he to becoming a murderer. According to Mourão, the young man pursued by those acts of violence preserved his honour amid immense misfortune. His father had abandoned Simão to the gallows, yet even in utter degradation the young man had never begged for mercy. A stranger had supported him with alms during eight months of imprisonment, help that honoured both giver and recipient. That very day, Mourão had visited the son of a lady he had known seated beside kings. He had found Simão in coarse clothes; Simão dressed according to his means and owed the trousers and jacket to a farrier. Mourão had advised him to ask his father for clothes. Simão had refused to ask anything of his father, who had consented to his son expiating on the scaffold the offences of his heart, dignity and family honour. ‘There is greatness in this eighteen-year-old man, Senhor Albuquerque,’ Mourão declared. Mourão claimed that Tadeu would have spared Baltasar had he accepted that love; he called the nephew a man without honour who had attacked Simão. In the magistrate's partisan argument, Simão would have lost his honour had he not repelled those offences. According to Mourão, Tadeu's opposition had led Simão to the gallows and sacrificed his nephew to the whims of a bad father. He asked whether the coat of arms would lose value if Teresa married the son of the chief magistrate of Viseu. Mourão did not know from which century Tadeu's nobility dated. But he knew the distinguished genealogies of Rita Teresa Margarida Preciosa Caldeirão Castelo Branco. On his father's side, Simão had some of the finest blood in Trás-os-Montes, capable of competing with the Albuquerques of Viseu. Moreover, they were certainly not the terrible Albuquerques celebrated by Camões. Wounded by the irony, Tadeu rose, took his hat and gold-headed cane, and made a formal bow of farewell. ‘Truths are bitter, are they not?’ Mourão asked with a smile. Tadeu replied ironically that Mourão knew what he was saying and he knew what he would do, wounded in his honour and his fifteen ancestors. Mourão assured him that Simão would not go to the gallows, although there was not yet a formal decision from the appeal court. ‘We shall see,’ Tadeu muttered.