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Thirteen days of March 1805 had passed. Simão was in a shared room of the Relação prison, with a plank bed, a ship's mattress, a table and a pine chair. A small bundle of clothes served as his pillow, and a blackwood box stood on the table. The box held Teresa's letters, dried bouquets, the manuscripts Simão had written in Viseu prison and one of Mariana's aprons. Mariana had wiped away her tears with that apron and torn it from herself when she lost her reason. Simão reread the letters, opened the papers around the flowers and searched the linen for traces of the tears. Then he pressed his face and chest against the window bars and gazed at the hills, the banks of Gaia and the Serra do Pilar monastery. It was a beautiful day, full of light, fragrance and the colours of spring. It was a day of love and hope that the Lord sent equally to cottages, palaces, rich people and beggars. Simão, however, fled from the brightness and the flight of the birds; he wept, thought and wrote.
In his meditations, he desired only bread earned by daily work and an hour in which to rest his face against Teresa's breast. He maintained that he had asked no more of Heaven. At sixteen, he wrote, he had become a man and seen virtue in the light of Teresa's love. He had considered that passion holy because it absorbed or purified every other passion. He denied having any desire that he could not confess before the world and asked Teresa whether he had ever offended her purity. ‘Never, Teresa, did I make my love your shame,’ he wrote. If Tadeu required him to crawl at his feet to deserve Teresa, Simão would kiss those feet. If Teresa ordered him to die so that she could be happy with another man, he would die. But Teresa was alone and unhappy, and Simão had believed that her executioner should not outlive her. He called himself a murderer and said that he felt no remorse. In defending himself, Simão said that the madness of crime might disturb other consciences, but not his own, for he had not feared the steps to the gallows. Every hour, he had expected to be summoned to the prison chapel before his execution. He had imagined that he would then speak to Jesus Christ. During seventy hours of moral agony, he had contemplated without fear consolations that a criminal should not expect from divine justice. Yet he wept for Teresa, for all her tears were added to the bitterness of his cup. In his thoughts, he heard her moan and imagined that she saw him in the convulsions of death. Simão's image would not beckon to her with a martyr's palm; it would rise like a ghost from the scaffold. ‘What a death yours would be, my holy friend!’ he concluded in that passage. He continued writing until João da Cruz entered the room.
João carried an order from the police intendant allowing him to visit the prisoner. Simão embraced him and asked in alarm whether Mariana had been left alone or might even be dead. João replied that Mariana had recovered her reason and was already much better. According to the farrier, she had been bled, treated with setons and cold water on her head, and subjected to a missionary's exorcisms. João called the affair witchcraft, but merely assured Simão that his daughter would travel once she was stronger. Simão blessed God while João criticised the bed and the lack of a decent chair. The farrier also asked humorously whether his friend had food. Simão said that he still had money, but João showed him a letter from Rita Preciosa. Rita authorised João to support her son and promised to pay all necessary bills that were duly signed. Simão accepted the help as fair because he was also entitled to his share of the inheritance. As João prepared to buy furniture, the prisoner asked him for a more valuable service. He wanted him to deliver a letter to Teresa de Albuquerque at the Monchique convent. João agreed and warned him that Tadeu was in Porto. In furious, comic speech, he threatened to strike Tadeu at a street corner or hang him from a cork tree; the threats remained only words. João asked whether there would be a reply to the letter. ‘If they give her the letter,’ Simão replied, leaving the delivery uncertain.
João reached Monchique as a court officer, two doctors and Tadeu were entering the courtyard. In the name of the district judge and at Tadeu's request, the officer demanded that the doctors examine Teresa. The abbess asked whether they had ecclesiastical permission to enter the convent. As they did not have that permission, she refused to open the doors. The doctors acknowledged that this was convent custom and left without examining Teresa. After the group had left, João devised a way to deliver the letter and approached the grille. He asked the abbess to call Teresa to speak to the father of a village girl she knew. When the superior asked who he was, João repeated that he was the girl's father. Teresa recognised the voice and hurried to the parlour while the abbess moved a little aside. ‘Take care what you do, my child,’ her aunt said, showing that she understood the disguise. Teresa asked João whether his daughter had written to her. The farrier confirmed it and placed Simão's letter on the convent turntable. The abbess noticed the paper and joked that love was very ingenious. She hoped that the girl's news would cheer Teresa, but reminded her that her old aunt was no less clever than the girl's father. Teresa answered the abbess's affectionate humour with kisses, read the letter and wrote a reply. As she handed over the reply, she pointed out to João a poor woman sitting by the steps. João knew the woman and was surprised that she had returned after the gardener had beaten her. Teresa told him to lower his voice and asked him to give future letters to that woman. She explained that she had already sent the woman to the prison, but she had not been allowed in. João approved the plan, took leave of Teresa and carried the reply to Simão.
That day, Simão received two great joys: Mariana had recovered her reason, and correspondence with Teresa was possible again. He thanked Providence while João arranged second-hand furniture in the room. Then João stopped working and announced a surprise: Mariana had travelled with him to Porto. She was resting at the inn, unable to move because of her pain, but the next day she would come to cook and clean for Simão. Simão received the news sadly and feared that his ill fortune would drag Mariana into the same depths. He called her a poor angel of charity, worthy of Heaven. He solemnly asked João to bring his daughter once so that he could see her, but not to leave her in Porto. He worried that Mariana, beautiful, alone and knowing nobody, would be exposed to harassment in an unfamiliar city. João laughed at the fear and compared harassed women to green pears that a man drops when he finds them hard. He said that, while courting his future wife, he had pinched her leg and received two blows to the face from her. Mariana took after her mother and had once struck young Mendes of Viseu with the reins for touching her shoe. Simão smiled at the extravagant praise of Mariana's courage and felt secret pride in the gentle care she had given him for eight months. He asked, however, whether João could really do without his daughter's company.
João replied that he would take an elderly sister-in-law into his home and would manage to care for himself. He believed that the chief magistrate would soon secure Simão's release, but that certainty was only João's hope. He also admitted that Mariana would burst like a chestnut if he did not allow her to come to Porto. João knew that his daughter loved Simão and trusted that he would never dishonour her. Simão embraced the farrier and exclaimed, ‘If only I could be your daughter's husband, my noble friend!’ It was an impossible wish, born of Simão's gratitude. His eyes filling with the first tears Simão had ever seen him shed, João replied that neither he nor Mariana had thought of marriage. He was a farrier, and Mariana knew that, because of the social difference, she could only serve Simão. João added that he did not wish to see his friend made unhappy by marrying a poor girl. With tears in his eyes, he said that he rarely wept but, once he began, resembled a fountain. He immediately returned to the furniture, arranging the table, chest of drawers, four chairs, bed, trunk, basin and water jug around the room. Mariana was bringing the sheets and other household linen and also wished to place two vases of flowers in the room. João explained that he had been refused entry the day before, but had taken Rita's letter to an appellate judge. Because of that letter, the police intendant's order had reached the inn that morning and allowed him to enter. At last, he went to fetch dinner, for Mariana might fear that he had been detained in the prison.