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The narrator recalls an incident loosely connected with the main story. The digression shows another side of Viseu's former magistrate, now out of office. Manoel Botelho, the eldest son, had returned to study mathematics at Coimbra. He then fled to Spain with an unnamed married woman. She had left her husband, an Azorean student of medicine. Manoel and the fugitive lived in A Coruña for a year. Rita Preciosa supported them by gradually selling her jewellery. Her devotion to Manoel deprived her daughters of ornaments suited to their age and rank. At last that source of money dried up, and no other remained. Rita wrote to Manoel that poverty had forced her to stop supporting Simão. Her few savings went towards repaying the person who had fed Simão out of compassion in Viseu and was still supporting him in Porto. For that reason, she could now send Manoel nothing. She nevertheless invited Manoel to return to Vila Real and bring the unfortunate woman with him. Manoel would go home; his companion would stay at an inn awaiting accommodation. The moment seemed favourable because Domingos was at Montezelos, almost estranged from the family. Manoel returned through Minho, reaching Porto with her fifteen days after Simão's imprisonment. The brothers never cared for each other, yet misfortune redeemed the faults of temperament that had estranged Simão from his parents. Only his younger sister Rita had left him a tender memory.
Manoel visited the prison with open arms but received a glacial welcome. He asked Simão how his disaster had happened. ‘It is all in the case record,’ Simão replied. Asked about freedom, Simão said he did not consider it. Manoel could offer little because poverty forced him home. He offered to share his own clothes with him if they were needed. Simão refused and declared that he accepted alms only from that woman. Mariana's beauty had led Manoel to conclusions that the narrator declares false. He asked who the young woman was. ‘She is an angel; I can tell you nothing more,’ Simão replied. Mariana smiled and introduced herself as the servant of Simão and Manoel alike. She said that she was not from Porto but from the outskirts of Viseu. Manoel wanted to know whether she had always kept his brother company. Mariana began to answer hesitantly, but Simão interrupted her. ‘Your curiosity troubles me, brother Manoel,’ he warned. Manoel took his hat and replied that he had thought the question harmless. Before leaving, he asked whether Simão had anything for their mother. ‘Nothing,’ Simão replied.
That afternoon, Manoel packed for Vila Real. He was then visited by the appellate judge Mourão Mosqueira and the crime magistrate. The crime magistrate said police surveillance had found Manoel at the inn. They came to greet the son of Domingos, the magistrate's old friend, fellow student and colleague, and offer help. Noticing the Azorean woman, the crime magistrate asked whether she was Manoel's wife. Manoel stammered that she was not his wife but his sister. Mourão asked which sister she was; he had seen all three in Viseu five years earlier. He remarked that she had changed beyond all recognition. ‘Is this Dona Ana Amália?’ he asked. Manoel confirmed the lie. Mourão praised her beauty, ironically insisting that her face had become entirely different. The crime magistrate asked whether they had visited the unfortunate Simão; Manoel said yes.
Mourão said that Simão had been like a thunderbolt striking the family. He assured Manoel that the death sentence would not be carried out and told him to inform his mother. His court was preparing to reduce the sentence to ten years of exile in India. Domingos had prepared proceedings in the Casa da Suplicação and Desembargo do Paço despite the dead man's powerful relatives. They wished to acquit him and restore him to his family, but Mourão deemed it impossible. Simão had killed and proudly confessed that he had killed. He would not even allow anyone to say that he had acted in self-defence. Mourão called him an unfortunate madman with the noblest feelings. Influential letters poured in for the Albuquerques, demanding the young man's head with outrageous directness. Manoel then asked about the young woman who had caused the disaster. ‘She is a heroine,’ replied the crime magistrate. He said that Teresa had already been given up for dead when Simão reached Porto. After hearing of the likely commutation, Teresa herself defied death and, according to the doctor quoted, was safe. Mourão asked Manoel's supposed sister whether she knew Teresa well. The Azorean woman glanced at her lover and replied that she knew Teresa very well. They said Teresa was exceedingly beautiful; Manoel readily agreed. On leaving, the crime magistrate sent Domingos an embrace and declared himself ever loyal. Mourão added another embrace for Manoel's virtuous mother.
After leaving, Mourão told his colleague that he was suspicious. He knew that Manoel had fled to Spain about a year earlier with a married woman. He concluded that the woman at the inn was not Manoel's sister. Offended in his austerity, the crime magistrate called Manoel a scoundrel for making them greet a concubine. He promised to investigate and wrote to Domingos by the next post. The letter's closing claimed he had met Manoel and one of Domingos's daughters. He had sent Domingos an embrace and joked that he would send him another through the young woman, if it were proper for old men to teach pretty girls how to embrace their fathers. Meanwhile, Manoel was at his grandparents' home, preparing modest lodgings for the Azorean woman. His mother, kind and indulgent towards him, was helping him. Domingos had learnt of the arrival but had refused to see his son. He warned Manoel that abandoning his authorised studies made him a deserter from the sixth cavalry regiment. After receiving the letter, Domingos secretly ordered inquiries into the woman's presence in Vila Real. Surveillance found her at the inn while Manoel decorated the house. Domingos wrote to the local magistrate, who summoned the suspected woman. She told her story sincerely through tears; the magistrate took pity and informed Domingos. Domingos went to Vila Real, stayed with the magistrate and had the woman summoned again. At the same time, the provincial general was preparing an arrest order for the deserting cadet.
Instead of the magistrate, the Azorean woman found an ugly, grim and sinister-looking man. ‘I am Manoel's father, and I know your story,’ said Domingos. He declared that Manoel was the villain and that she was the victim. He also said that her punishment began when conscience revealed the act's unworthiness. If her conscience had not yet told her so, he added, it eventually would. Trembling, the woman replied that she came from the island of Faial. She said that she had a mother and sisters. Asked whether her mother would shelter her, she believed she would. Domingos revealed that Manoel was a deserter and would now be either arrested or in hiding. She replied that she knew nothing about it. That meant, Domingos concluded, that she had no one to protect her. The poor woman sobbed, choked with anguish and bathed in tears. Asked why she did not return home, she admitted having no resources. Domingos asked whether she wished to leave that very day. At the door she would find a litter and a maid to accompany her to Porto. In Porto she would deliver a letter to whoever arranged her passage to Lisbon. In Lisbon, another intermediary would put her on the first ship to the Azores. Domingos asked whether she accepted the plan. She kissed his hands, saying that someone so unfortunate had never expected such charity.
A few hours later, the medical student's wife... An imagined sensitive female reader supposes that the husband may have died of passion and shame. ‘No, madam,’ the narrator replies to her directly. The student continued attending the University that year. His knowledge of pathology, the narrator jokes, had spared him death from shame. That death, he provocatively claims, was invented by Garrett in Frei Luís de Sousa. Death from passion was supposedly another invention, created by lovers in letters written out of spite. Such a death, he continues, did not afflict husbands endowed with some Greek and Roman philosophy. Ironically, he recalls ancient philosophers offering their wives to friends who had not taken them. The medical student neither died nor wasted away, and no anxiety disturbed the pleasures of therapeutics. It was an irony of his age; faced with the woman's true suffering, however, the narrator's smile faded. His wife was undoubtedly more broken and unwell, bathed in tears and longing. Without a future, hope or human comfort, she entered the litter and reached Porto. There she sought the crime magistrate and handed him a letter from Dr Domingos Botelho.
Domingos's letter called her a daughter of whom he had heard but whom he neither knew nor acknowledged. Her mother lived on Faial, he explained, and the woman was returning there. He ordered the crime magistrate to arrange transport through Lisbon to the Azores on the first ship. He asked him to account for the expenses afterwards. With dark humour, he said Manoel at least had the virtue of killing nobody to become a lover. Ironically, not killing a beloved woman's husband already made a man virtuous. Domingos asked the crime magistrate to try to obtain Manoel's pardon from the general. The deserter from the sixth cavalry regiment was reportedly hiding in a relative's house. As for Simão, Domingos believed it impossible to save him from temporary exile. Saving him from the gallows would already be ‘uma lança em África’ - a period idiom for a great feat. He added that powerful forces in Lisbon were moving against the unfortunate man. He also claimed to be out of favour with the police intendant for having left office. Thus Domingos revealed himself: capable of helping, yet without reconciling himself with Simão.
The Azorean woman left for Lisbon and from there travelled home to her mother's shelter. Her mother had believed her dead and gave her perhaps unhappy but peaceful years, free of new illusions. Manoel did in fact obtain a pardon through the influence of the crime magistrate. He transferred to a regiment in Lisbon and remained there until his father's death. Only afterwards did he request discharge from the army and return to the province.