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Six years after Honorata's escape, in 1845, Zeferino das Lamelas was still travelling between Barrimão and Quadros. During that interval, the five children had remained at the house of Quadros and Vasco Cerveira Lobo's habits had scarcely changed. He was very fat and seemed to possess an iron constitution. The narrator presents that robustness as a comic triumph over those who denied the nourishing virtues of alcohol. Cerveira was approaching fifty, with a martial air, untrimmed grey whiskers and bright eyes inflamed by many years of drinking.
Teresinha, the young woman whom Rosa de Carude had denounced, had run away to marry a seminarian from Quintãs. The other two were very rough and had engineers and contractors on the new roads between Braga, Porto and Guimarães as lovers. No respectable man wanted to marry them, both because of the family's disrepute and because their father refused to give them a dowry. Since Honorata had fled, Cerveira had convinced himself that the girls were not his daughters.
Heitor and Egas, two showy young men, rode spirited mares into the fairs with such arrogance that everyone cleared a path for them. They were brave and drunken, pursued poor women and behaved awkwardly and brutally in front of ladies. They stole maize and wine from the estate and sold timber and scrub from the more distant land at ruinous prices. Despite everything, the house of Quadros was not mortgaged, prospered and remained among the most important in the district. The wine cellar was the landowner's only luxury. When the daughters spoke of their mother among themselves, they showed their estrangement, but the text does not allow the word they used for her to be recovered. The boys, with an indifference that could pass itself off as dignity, behaved as though they had no mother.
Before dinner, Cerveira became silent and gloomy, as though trying to free himself from a nightmare. In the afternoon, he returned to the bright visions interrupted only by brief moments of reason. The narrator declares that he does not know what Cerveira thought about the wife who had fled.
Cerveira admitted few people to the house and even fewer into his presence. He also received Zeferino, who had built his granaries and repaired some fallen walls.
Recently, Zeferino and Cerveira had often spoken about Dom Miguel's supposed arrival. He promised that, as soon as Dom Miguel arrived, Zeferino would see him at the head of his Chaves dragoons. He bent his legs over an imaginary rearing horse, leaned his body forwards and snorted with fierce gestures. The narrator calls the spectacle ridiculous enough to make one weep. Zeferino admitted to his father that he was sometimes afraid of Cerveira when he acted out those scenes. With his experience of such bloodless feats, Gaspar concluded that port wine was the Devil.
On returning from Santa Marta de Bouro, Zeferino told Cerveira what he had learnt at the militia commander's house. The lieutenant-colonel wanted to leave for Lanhoso at once, but he had no decent clothes in which to present himself to the king he imagined was there. In summer, he balanced the heat of the alcohol against that of the weather by walking about in long drawers and fanning himself with his shirt-tail. For decency's sake, he shut himself in his rooms, but now he summoned a tailor from Braga to make him military and civilian clothes.
Meanwhile, Zeferino discouraged him by reporting that his godfather at Barrimão and the friar did not believe the king was at Calvos. According to them, it might be a scheme by Doctor Cândido de Anelhe and certain priests to take fifty contos from Dona Isabel Maria. Cerveira's enthusiasm cooled for a moment. It seemed to him that his old friend Dom Miguel would already have sent for him if he were really there. However, Cristóvão Bezerra claimed that he had kissed the king's hand, and that statement was enough for Zeferino and Cerveira to believe again.
Cerveira then arranged for Zeferino to go to Lanhoso and ask the militia commander to take him to Calvos. The abbot was to announce to the supposed king that a messenger had arrived with a letter from Vasco Cerveira Lobo, lieutenant-colonel of dragoons. He ordered him to kneel, deliver the letter and return with an answer. If he were not summoned, he promised to raise five or six thousand men for the cause. To avoid arguments and delays, Zeferino did not tell his godfather or his father about the mission, since their outpourings grew with drunkenness.
Cerveira then sought out Father Rocha, Dona Andresa's chaplain, and confessed that he had no shortage of ideas, although he had forgotten the name of the thing needed for writing. Rocha suggested that he meant spelling, and Cerveira immediately accepted the word. He then revealed in a low voice that his friend and king Dom Miguel was in the district of Póvoa de Lanhoso. He asked the priest to draft the letter so that he could copy it at his leisure. With his hand on Rocha's shoulder, he promised him a good abbey as a reward, perhaps Santiago de Antas, or a canonry.
On hearing the revelation, he first thought that Cerveira was in his usual drunken state. When he noticed the firm posture and clear speech, he instead suspected a disorder caused by many years of alcohol. Finally, he concluded only that certain opportunists were deceiving and ridiculing the poor man. He had no confirmation that the king was present, but he felt compassion for Cerveira and for the decline of that family. It was reported at the time that Adolfo was a judge in the Azores and lived with a beautiful mistress and three boys.
The only idea Cerveira supplied for the letter was an offer of money. He wanted to tell His Majesty to ask for whatever he needed, since everything would be at his king's service to the limit of the resources of Quadros. Rocha did not refuse to help, but the sentence that would fully explain the reason he gave Dona Andresa is incomplete in the text. Without confirming the supposed king, he wrote cautiously and stayed close to Cerveira so that he could follow the reply and protect him from possible exploitation. The letter emerged so pompous that Cerveira had to ask its author for comments and explanations.
Cerveira took six pintos from his waistcoat pocket and offered them to the priest for snuff. Rocha refused the payment and asked him to put the money, in his name, towards Dom Miguel's needs. Delighted with such a royalist, Cerveira pocketed the six pintos, embraced him and offered him a glass of wine from 1817. Rocha said that he very much wished to see His Majesty's reply. Cerveira promised to show it to him as soon as it arrived, since there would be no secrets between them. With deliberately comic delight and the fragrant glass beneath his nose, Rocha asked whether he might yet become an archbishop.
Cerveira assured him that it was as certain as two and two making four, because everything was going to change. He declared that, despite being forty-nine, his fist could still wield a sword and he longed for a fierce fight. Cerveira recalled that in the past he had condemned the beatings of Liberals as unbecoming, but swore that he would now advise Dom Miguel to use still greater force. Cerveira then began to stammer, stagger and spill the wine.