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Baltasar Coutinho was in the drawing room, feigning a vengeful indifference towards his cousin. The nobleman's sisters and the rest of the family gave Teresa no room to breathe, repeating in chorus that she ought to be reconciled with her cousin. Young and old begged her to grant her poor father the joy for which he prayed so earnestly to God before closing his eyes. Teresa replied that she bore Baltasar no ill will and was not even resentful towards him. ‘I am his friend and shall remain so as long as he leaves my heart free.’
Tadeu expected much from that festive evening, arranged according to the wisdom of relatives who advised pleasures suited to his daughter's age. They said that diversions would distribute Teresa's concentrated mind among several objects and occupy natural vanity, gradually breaking the strength of thwarted love. They recommended frequent gatherings, at home or among relatives, so that the girl might be seen and courted by many and lower in her estimation the only man she judged superior to all others. The nobleman yielded with difficulty, because he possessed his own system for judging women and because, after thirty years of libertine and expensive living, he had begun to savour economy and quiet. The ordinarily closed house filled for the first time with music, courtly minuets and parlour games that lightened the intervals without tiring the body or, according to the age, offending morality.
Too agitated to share the guests' pleasure, Teresa began to withdraw from all the attention around her as soon as ten o'clock struck. Ladies and gentlemen competed in flattering the queen of the evening, but Baltasar noticed her unease and had the modesty to imagine that his cousin suffered from his indifference. Generous even to forgiveness, he composed a grave and melancholy expression, approached Teresa and apologised for his own coldness. He compared it to the outer snow of mountains that conceal volcanoes within. Teresa replied with perfect sincerity that she had not noticed her cousin's coldness. She called a young girl to her side, a prudent precaution against the possibility that the mountain might open into volcanoes.
Shortly afterwards Teresa rose and left the drawing room. It was a quarter to eleven when she ran to the end of the garden and opened the door, but Simão had not yet arrived. She ran back to the house and, while climbing the stairs that linked the garden to the rooms, was watched by Baltasar from a window without realising that he saw her. Baltasar withdrew and entered the drawing room at the same time as she did, each through a different door. After several minutes Teresa went out again, and her cousin followed her. Upon reaching the landing, she heard the clatter of a horse in the distance, a sound Baltasar also distinguished. Fearing that the whiteness of her dress might betray her, Teresa had wrapped herself in a cloak or shawl, and Baltasar stepped back to avoid being seen. In one fearful glance she nevertheless saw a figure withdrawing, felt afraid and went back to leave the cloak behind. She entered the drawing room breathless with exertion and pale with fear.
Tadeu asked why she had already left the room twice and returned in such agitation. ‘I have a pain and need to go out for air from time to time, but it is nothing, Father.’ Tadeu believed her and informed the guests that his daughter was in pain, though he did not tell his nephew, who had meanwhile disappeared. Teresa too had noticed her cousin's absence and pretended that she was going to look for him, a resolution that greatly pleased her father.
She went down into the garden, ran to the door where Simão was waiting and opened it. Her voice broken by anxiety, she said only: ‘Go away and return tomorrow at the same hour; go, go!’ There was no kiss, embrace or even time for the intimacy Simão had imagined.
While listening to her, Simão kept his eyes on a figure approaching close beside the garden wall. The carrier had seen him first, given the agreed signal and wedged the reins among stones so that he would be free if the student needed help. Simão did not leave his place, and Baltasar stopped six paces away. The carrier was slowly advancing towards his master when Simão ordered him not to come nearer. Walking towards the stranger, Simão cocked two pistols and warned him that the place was not a public road. When the nobleman did not answer, he threatened to open his mouth with a bullet. Baltasar asked what right that man had to demand a name and why he should confess his own secret to someone who appeared to be guarding another in that place. After reflecting, Simão observed that the wall belonged to a house in which there lived only one family and one woman. Baltasar retorted that more than forty women were in the house that night and that, if the gentleman was waiting for one, he might be waiting for another. Arrogantly, the chief magistrate's son again asked who he was. 'I do not know the man questioning me, nor do I wish to know him; let each of us preserve his anonymity, and good night.' Baltasar withdrew, reckoning that one sword was of little use against two men and two pistols.
Simão mounted his horse and returned to the house of the farrier who had sheltered him. Tadeu's nephew entered the drawing room without betraying the slightest disturbance. Teresa watched him sidelong, and her cousin's perfect dissimulation reassured her. Wearied by emotion, she was pleased to see the first family leave, a signal for the others to withdraw, although Baltasar and his sisters remained as Tadeu's guests for eight days. Teresa spent the rest of the night awake, writing Simão a detailed account of her terrors and asking forgiveness for not warning him about the gathering, since joy at his coming had made her lose her reason. In the letter she did not alter the plan to meet on the following night, a decision that astonished Simão, who was convinced the figure had been Baltasar and that Tadeu would be warned that very night.
He replied with an account of the encounter with the hooded man, but wrote a second letter in which neither fear of attack nor concern for staining Teresa's reputation was allowed to show. That seemed to him the conduct worthy of a courageous lover. He spent the day counting the hours and reflecting, at intervals, on the disastrous results of his reckless visit if Baltasar had reserved his revenge for a better occasion. Yet he told himself that thinking about it would be cowardice rather than prudence.
The farrier had a twenty-four-year-old daughter with a graceful figure and a beautiful but sad face. Simão noticed that the young woman had been gazing at him for some time and asked the reason for that melancholy look. Mariana blushed, gave a sad smile and replied: ‘I do not know what my heart foretells about you, sir, but some misfortune is about to befall you.’ Simão observed that she would not say such a thing without knowing something of his life. The young woman admitted knowing something, not through the carrier but because her father knew Domingos Botelho and knew Simão as well. She had just heard João tell his brother-in-law, Mariana's uncle and the carrier who had come with the student, that he had reasons to foresee a calamity. In answer to Simão's question, she explained only that it was because of a noblewoman from Viseu who had a cousin in Castro Daire.
Astonished by the publicity of the secret he thought confined to two families, Simão was about to ask for details when João da Cruz entered the upper room. On hearing her father's footsteps, Mariana quickly left by another door. ‘With your leave,’ said Master João, locking both doors from the inside before sitting upon a chest. He lowered the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt and fastened them with difficulty around his thick wrists, like a man well acquainted with the demands of ceremony. ‘Now then, my noble sir, forgive me for coming in my shirtsleeves, but I could not find my jacket.’ Simão assured him that he was perfectly well as he was.
João began by declaring that he owed Simão's father a favour, and a favour of the kind that binds a man for life. Once a disturbance had broken out at the workshop door because a muleteer's mule kicked a mare João was shoeing and broke her hock. João indicated on his own leg the exact point of the mare's fracture, a professional precision that did not appear to lessen the violence of the story. ‘I had the hammer to hand and could not restrain myself: I struck the mule on the head with it, and down it went.’ ‘The muleteer from Carção, a very bold fellow, pulled a blunderbuss from among the load and fired at me without so much as by-your-leave.’ João had even asked him how he could shoot at a man who would have to pay for a mare worth twenty coins after the mule had crippled her. In answer to Simão's question, he confirmed that the shot had struck his left arm with two pellets, although, as could be seen, it had not killed him. He had then gone into the house, fetched a carbine from the head of the bed and fired it into the muleteer's chest. ‘The man dropped like a thrush and never made another sound.’
João was arrested and taken to Viseu, and after three years in prison everyone told him that he would end by kicking at the gallows. In the dungeon, a convicted man told him that the chief magistrate had great devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady. When Domingos passed with his family on the way to Mass, João begged him, by the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin, to summon him so that he might explain his guilt. The chief magistrate ordered the chief bailiff to record the prisoner's name and received him the following day. João told him everything and showed the scars on his arm, to which Domingos replied: ‘Go now, and I shall do what I can.’ Against the prediction of those who saw him hanged at his own door, João was acquitted. ‘Tell me, my noble sir, whether I should not lay my face wherever your dear father sets his feet.’ Simão acknowledged that João had reason to be grateful to Domingos.
João continued by saying that before becoming a farrier he had served as a liveried servant in the house of the nobleman from Castro Daire. Baltasar had lent him ten gold coins to establish himself, a sum the farrier, thanks be to God, had already repaid. About six months earlier, Baltasar had summoned him to Viseu and offered him thirty coins for a service. João had replied that he would do whatever the nobleman wished, until he heard that the service consisted of taking a man's life. ‘That stirred something inside me, because a man who kills another in a tight corner is not a killer by profession, is he?’ Simão agreed and, guessing the end of the story, asked who the man marked for death had been. ‘It was you, sir,’ João replied, astonished that Simão did not change colour in the least. Simão declared that he never changed colour and confirmed that João had not accepted the commission. ‘No, sir; when I heard your name, I wanted to hammer Baltasar's head into a corner.’
Baltasar had not explained the reason for the contract, but in the following week, as soon as he learnt of the nobleman's departure, João sought out Domingos and told him everything. The chief magistrate rubbed his nose, reflected for a moment and said that he knew what it was about. ‘If that scoundrel of a son of mine had any honour, he would not set his eyes upon the relation of a murderer,’ João recalled, apologising for repeating the father's words. Domingos had added that he would never consent to his son's union with a daughter of Tadeu de Albuquerque. That was how João learnt the story that he now saw arriving at his own house.
The farrier knew that Simão had gone to Viseu the previous night to speak to Teresa and admitted that he had nearly followed him. As his brother-in-law, a man worth three ordinary men, had accompanied the student, João had rested easy, but the account of the encounter by the wall confirmed the danger. ‘If you return there, Senhor Simão, go prepared for something greater, because no one is safe from treachery.’ He offered to accompany him with the carbine that had done justice to the muleteer and which, he said, would fire even under water. Even so, he gave the opinion that it would be best to avoid those masked nocturnal ventures and ask Domingos for permission to marry. If Teresa consented, João promised to put her in the blink of an eye upon a gentle mare he owned, leaving father and cousin stranded and staring after them.
Simão thanked his new friend and promised to make use of his services when they were needed. He declared that that night he would return to Viseu as he had the night before and that, if anything happened, the two of them would decide what to do. João did not reply, but went to examine the carbine's lock carefully and agree precautions with his brother-in-law. He unloaded the weapon and reloaded it with special bullets he called fops' almonds.
Meanwhile Mariana returned to the upper room and gently asked Simão whether it was truly settled that he would go. ‘I am going; why should I not?’ he replied. ‘Then may Our Lady go with you,’ Mariana answered. She left at once to hide her tears; thus began her still unnamed care for Simão.