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Around that time, missionaries arrived in Requião. They came from the lands of Basto. The Maria da Fonte revolt had interrupted their work. The narrator calls their religious work fruitless. Marta received the news with joy. She wanted to hear the sermons and save her soul. Feliciano had returned from Pernambuco with little faith. Even so, he did not prevent his niece and wife's devotions. Friar Roque warned that mysticism could harm Marta. He advised Feliciano to travel with her. Roque said that sermons and communion wafers could not cure those illnesses. He knew that Friar João would begin by calling Marta demonic.
“They will destroy her,” Roque kept saying.
The four missionaries settled in Requião. Ironically, the narrator calls the place an entrance to paradise.
The first was Father José da Fraga. He was young, clean and seemed intelligent. He had wanted to take Christianity to China. But family interests made him stay in Portugal. He read religious authors and imitated Lacordaire. Father Osório said that this audience did not understand his ideas. The women fell asleep during the morning sermons. The men said that God had not called him to that path. Their phrase was simple and popular.
The second was Father Cosme de Tagilde. He was strong, middle-aged and the author of religious books. He had previously been a sergeant in the royalist army. He became a priest to inherit the property of a devout relative. The novels he had read gave him a very sweet manner of speaking. He knew how to move mothers who had lost children. In his sermons, he spoke as if he were a dead child. “Mother, do not sin,” he said in a childish voice. He said that a sinful mother would not see her child again. He tilted his head and held out his arms. He also made his mouth look like a child's. Then he called for the mother again. All the bereaved mothers began to cry loudly. The narrator presents the sermon as a calculated performance.
The third was Father Silvestre da Azenha. He wore a very dirty cassock, but he was a good person. He was not capable of lying deliberately. He knew many stories about Hell and demons. According to him, each infernal leader directed a vice. Lucifer governed lust and Leviathan governed pride. Mammon was the minister of greed. The narrator jokes about the name Mammon and medicinal castor oil. Silvestre also spoke about demons called incubi. He told stories of women made pregnant by those beings. In Latin, he said that this could happen against their will. The statement was Silvestre's belief, not a fact. The women understood the meaning and became indignant. They crossed themselves and spat behind them. The scene therefore mixes fear, faith and satire.
The fourth missionary was Friar João of Borba da Montanha. He was the most important man in the mission. He was already old and had a weak chest. He had a cough, phlegm and few teeth. For that reason, his words came out like whistles. He worked mainly in the confessional. He was famous for claiming that he expelled demons. Silvestre studied the demons and João tried to drive them out. The narrator presents the two men as the terror of Hell. The vicar of Caldelas had trusted him before. In that earlier case, it concerned José Dias's mother. The sentence does not say that this woman was Marta.
Friar João had financed the third edition of a book. It was called The Sinner Converted to the Path of Truth. The author was Friar Manuel de Deus, not Friar João. João sold each half-bound copy for 720 réis. He said that the book was a bucket for drawing souls out of Hell. The devout women felt that they were inside that well. “Cheap,” the narrator comments ironically.
Simeão and his son-in-law Feliciano chose Friar João. Marta remembered José speaking about this friar. José had hoped that Friar João would overcome the obstacles to their marriage. For that reason, Marta wanted to confess to the missionary. She waited for him from daybreak. She was anxious, but also very happy. She seemed to expect supernatural help from her dead beloved. Father Osório saw a sign of mental suffering in that joy. Osório could not know for certain what Marta felt. Marta waited at the church door. The missionaries arrived, followed by hooded women. Their clogs struck the churchyard railings.
Inside the church, the women received communion. The narrator describes this sacred moment grotesquely. Outside the church, two stalls sold religious goods. The women sellers were covered in dust from their journeys. They wanted to attract the same customers. They therefore insulted each other beside the silent church. One shouted “drunkard” and the other answered back. Faith and trade occupied the same space.
There were many books by the missionaries on the stalls. They sold religious rules, prayers and meditations. There were also books devoted to Mary, Jesus and Saint Barbara. Some images were so ugly that the narrator calls them offensive. There were scapulars for various saints and devotions. They also sold cords of Saint Francis. The belts of Saint Augustine had a bone button. They said that this button kept the Devil away. The narrator compares bone with flesh in a pun. Prayers on metal or cord were also sold. The most popular medals cost ten réis. They showed the Heart of Mary, Jesus, angels or Saint Teresa.
There were religious chaplets of various sizes. The Seraphic chaplets had seven mysteries. Each mystery had ten Hail Marys. Other chaplets had twelve Hail Marys and three mysteries. Some women used rosaries of fifteen mysteries. Jet beads sold very well. People said that they protected against the evil eye. If they were genuine, they were meant to split under such a gaze.
The sellers called Marta “the brasileira of Prazins”. It was only a nickname linked to her husband, who had returned from Brazil. Marta was Portuguese and bought two of everything. Her favourite book was her confessor's edition of The Converted Sinner.
No one could know the secrets of Marta's confession. Even so, Father Osório formed a suspicion. He thought that the missionary had asked very detailed and intimate questions. Perhaps Marta had spoken of longing, dreams and visions of José. Osório knew what Friar João had prescribed. Marta had to read chapter thirty-three. It was called Resistance to Temptations against Chastity. Friar João told her to read it three times a day. Marta had told Teresa that José's soul appeared in her dreams. Sometimes, while awake, she seemed to feel him beside her in bed. Then she bit the pillow so that her uncle would not hear her crying. The narrator admits that there might have been more sensory details. Perhaps Marta was ashamed to tell Teresa about them. This is only a possibility, not the certain content of the confession. One thing was certain: Marta read the prayer aloud. She did this three times a day before the oratory.
The prayer began with a search full of longing.
“Loving Lord, do not hide,” the voice of the prayer begged. The voice said that a lion surrounded her. She promised to seek the beloved across earth and Heaven. She asked the daughters of Jerusalem to carry a message. “Tell him that I am dying of love,” the prayer said. The beloved was white, ruddy and chosen among thousands. He was white because he was divine and red because he was human and wounded. The signs increased the longing and seemed like arrows. Without the beloved, the voice said that she died and fainted.
Then it described the beloved's hair as gold and palm shoots. The hair was a set of strong bonds able to hold the world. The eyes were doves beside running water. They were gentle, pure, sweet and loving. The face seemed like a garden of fragrant flowers. Those flowers never withered in sun, cold, water or wind. The voice wanted the gardener to plant flowers in her garden. She called on birds, flowers and fish to find the beloved. She then realised that the gardener himself was that beloved. The lips were lilies that dripped myrrh. Words of purity and sacrifice came from them. But the voice longed to see the colour of those lips. The hands seemed like gold set with precious stones. Each hand bore the red mark of a wound. The chest was ivory decorated with sapphires. The prayer called the feelings in that breast pure and divine. The voice asked why he was hiding. The beloved's appearance was like Lebanon and a cedar. His throat was sweet because of his voice and breath. In the end, the beloved was entirely beautiful, perfect and worthy of love. The prayer repeated: “Tell him that I am dying of love.”
Marta recited this prayer aloud in a singing voice. The narrator links the words to the Song of Songs. For him, they were very sensual religious verses. Using period language, he criticises the ecstasies of several religious women. He mentions Teresa of Jesus, Maria Alacoque and Maria do Céu. He also criticises modern religious manuals from France. Those books presented Jesus with a young and beautiful body. According to the narrator, young women thus learnt to desire him. This opinion belongs to the nineteenth-century narrator. It is not a modern medical diagnosis of Marta.
Marta could not imagine the incomprehensible God. In the human Christ, she saw a figure she could touch. The only possible comparison was José Dias. For Marta, José was the spouse of her soul. In the words addressed to Jesus, she imagined the body of her dead beloved. She saw him among clouds, pale and with fair curls. The book opened a courtship in Heaven for her. Friar João wanted to drive temptations from her body and soul. But the prayer made Marta long for José even more.