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In 1845, Father Luís de Sousa Couto lived at number 1, Rua de S. Sebastião, in Porto. He was a palaeographer for the Misericórdia, appeared to be in his sixties and suffered from gout in his swollen feet. Despite his heavy, unhealthy body, he was cheerful, smiled openly and spoke slowly, with great precision. He listened without impatience to interruptions, tiresome talk and even the greatest foolishness. His work on old manuscripts earned him eight tostões, that is, eight hundred réis a day. He lived with extreme modesty in a filthy street, between the prison and the dirt of Pena Ventosa. Yet that obscure man was the driving force, soul and brain of the Miguelist movement in the North.
The Lisbon Junta consulted him, Ribeiro Saraiva wrote to him from London and Dom Miguel frequently sent him letters. It was said that the exiled prince had chosen him as Bishop or Patriarch of Lisbon. The narrator himself admits that he could no longer remember which of those dignities it was. Luís treated opponents kindly, refused donations from his allies and preferred poverty to asking the Liberal government for payment.
At dusk on 15 May 1845, he was writing his correspondence for London. Father Bernardo Rocha sent to ask when he might speak to him and was received at once. Rocha declared that his loyalty to the Royalist cause was well known and that he would sacrifice his peace for his convictions. For that reason, he believed that he had the right to ask a question and receive a truthful answer. 'Is Dom Miguel in Portugal?' he asked. 'No, sir; fifteen days ago he was in Italy,' Luís replied. He opened a drawer and took from a worn leather folder, fastened with ties, a letter signed by Dom Miguel de Bragança. The letter was dated 1 May and supported Luís's certainty about the prince's whereabouts fifteen days earlier.
Luís said that Bezerra de Barrimau, Barata, Manuel de Magalhães and other men from Braga had already asked him the same question. Certain priests were spreading the claim that Dom Miguel was in Alto Minho, in the municipality of Póvoa de Lanhoso. Luís considered the rumour absurd and saw in it only an attempt to alarm the government or deceive credulous people. Rocha confirmed that the purpose was precisely to deceive the credulous. He then described the case of Cerveira Lobo and the letter Cerveira had received from the supposed Dom Miguel. Cerveira still held the three contos and intended to take them to the impostor the following Saturday. Luís replied that it was necessary to prevent Cerveira's loss and the disgrace of the Legitimist party. Rocha needed that certainty to avoid acting rashly and announced that he would go from there to Braga to speak to the civil governor.
Luís approved the decision, since he could see no gentler remedy for that impostor's schemes. He said he had heard, only a few hours earlier, that some wealthy devout women from Braga, surnamed Botelhas, had sent a substantial sum through a certain abbot. The money was intended for a Dom Miguel hidden in Portugal, but Luís did not know whether the abbot was a thief or merely a fool. Only the second possibility might save him from prosecution, and punishing the impostor would serve humanity and the Legitimist cause. Luís added that Ribeiro Saraiva was seeking a loan and trying to recruit the generals the cause needed. Póvoas had been decrepit and almost lost to the cause since Souto Redondo, while many senior commissions belonged to men as intelligent as Cerveira. Others had learnt cowardice during the Siege of Porto and sold their swords to clear a path towards the Liberal budget. In the following year, the party ought to show signs of life, though they might be only the spasms of a galvanised corpse. Luís expected Dom Miguel to go to London and asked Rocha to place his influence at the service of the Legitimist cause when that happened. He dismissed him because the packet boat would leave Lisbon two days later and he was still writing to Ribeiro Saraiva.
In Braga, the Secretary-General, Marques Murta, was acting as civil governor during Conselheiro João Elias's absence. Murta was a man of feverish energy, elegant, perceptive, obliging and always attentive to the refinements of good manners. Rocha told him everything and asked that the arrest should not be delayed, since Cerveira planned to travel on Saturday with the three contos. Smiling, Murta suggested that it would be more exemplary to arrest him afterwards and keep the money in the district treasury, since Cerveira wished to devote it to the monarchy. Rocha failed to understand the irony and feared that his friend would be robbed in the name of Dom Miguel I or Dona Maria II. Murta corrected him: if the man was in Calvos, by that time the following day he would be in Braga prison.
Around midnight that day, an Infantry 8 escort left the Pópulo barracks and reached São Gens at dawn. It was guided by a man who knew the approaches to the residence and had once belonged to the gang that ravaged the Póvoa district in 1834. Now converted and employed by the secret police, he enjoyed a reward which the narrator ironically calls honestly earned. The guide placed the soldiers around the house, near the windows and the rectory wall, and showed the sergeant the carriage gate. At daybreak, the birds took flight at the crash of rifle butts against the main door. 'Open up, or we will break the door down!' formidable voices shouted.
The abbot leapt out of bed, saw soldiers with bayonets and ran barefoot to the room beside the guest's alcove. He found Veríssimo in his shirt, pulling on his trousers in near darkness and breathing anxiously. 'What is happening?' Veríssimo asked, almost voiceless with fear. 'It is the troops, sir; I shall hide Your Majesty in the cellar before they break down the door,' the abbot replied. The blows continued while hoarse voices called for axes and other tools to force an entry. In the kitchen, Senhorinha let out piercing cries and could not even put her petticoat on the right way round. The Castro Laboreiro dogs hurled themselves at the doors, the pigs grunted and an errand girl invoked the Blessed Mother and an aunt's soul. Two farm servants, unaware of the secret and afraid of conscription, buried themselves in the hay and promised alms to the saints. Wearing carpet slippers, Veríssimo followed the abbot through the kitchen to the cellar, which a maid opened discreetly.
Two empty casks stood upright in a corner and concealed, between their curved wood and the wall, enough space for a man. The abbot told him to climb up, slide behind the casks, press himself against the wall and not move during the search. In complete darkness, cobwebs clung to Veríssimo's nose and lips, and he shook them off and spat in disgust. He could not crouch, heard rats beneath the casks and listened to doors opening with a crash upstairs. The sergeant and three soldiers entered and slowly examined the rooms and every corner. The sergeant was Pílula of the 8th Regiment, a joker who demanded the king and several bottles of gin from the abbot.
He said that the royal household's wine cellar must be rich and that the soldiers wished to drink Dom Miguel's health. The abbot joined in the mockery and replied that he could give them gin, but, as for kings, he had only the king of hearts. Pílula also asked for the ace of the same suit, to place it on guard beside the king. Soldier 24 proposed giving the priest two kicks, but the sergeant first wanted to settle the matter without violence. Pílula ordered the abbot to take them to the gin and the cellar without wasting any more time. When the abbot explained that the gin was upstairs, the sergeant ordered him to send it down, where it would be cooler. He then demanded that the cellar door be opened. The abbot went downstairs with ironic condescension while a maid pretended to search for the key. Pílula threatened to break down the door and told soldier 24 to fetch an axe from the kitchen. The abbot immediately produced the key and invited the soldiers to search as much as they pleased.
At the entrance to the dark cellar, Pílula asked whether it was the throne room or the dungeons of the Inquisition. He ordered a lamp or torch to be lit, and the abbot asked for a light while disguising his terror. Behind the casks, Veríssimo trembled like Heliogabalus in the latrine that had served as his final refuge. Senhorinha entered with a dim tallow lamp whose wick seemed to make the cellar even darker. The sergeant told soldier 14 to prepare a straw torch and protested at the feeble light. A maid carried the light towards the side opposite the hiding place, but it spread so slowly that the narrator jokes about the speed of light. The soldiers tapped the cask tops with their knuckles and heard the dull sound of full vessels. Soldier 14 remarked that the abbot drank his rough young wine heartily, since the casks were full. On seeing the two empty casks in the corner, Pílula asked whether their wine had fallen into the sacristy and flicked the priest's belly.
The abbot's pale smiles looked like a denunciation. Soldier 24 thought he heard something behind the casks, but the abbot replied that it must be rats. Pílula ordered number 24 to probe the space behind the casks with his bayonet. As soon as the steel scraped the wall, Senhorinha screamed, sat kicking her legs and lost consciousness. With no certainty that the faint was feigned, the soldier turned towards her and withdrew his bayonet. The abbot explained that she often suffered bouts of wind and hoped that the search was over. He insisted that there was nothing there and tried to lead the men out with the light. The sergeant told him to wait and ordered number 24 to go back to prodding the supposed rats. Another soldier joined the search, and the bayonets touched a body which muffled their metallic sound without wounding anyone. There was then a great noise of someone climbing over the casks, and a head with an enormous beard appeared above one of the tops.
'A very welcome arrival at this celebration, Dom Miguel I!' Pílula exclaimed mockingly. He invited the false king to address the troops from that throne before ordering him to come down. Soldier 24 thought that he looked like the Eternal Father. Soldier 14 replied that he looked more like the Remexido of the Algarve. Pílula became serious again, assured him that no one would harm him and declared him under arrest by order of the civil governor. The abbot still tried to protest, with clasped hands, but could not finish his sentence. 'This man is not Dom Miguel,' the sergeant stated, calling him an impostor who lived at the expense of the priest and other gullible people. He ordered Veríssimo's clothes to be fetched so that he would not join the escort in his shirtsleeves. At the abbot's request, he allowed the prisoner to dress in the room, always within sight of the guards. While Veríssimo put on his heavy cloth coat, the abbot signalled that the Botelhas money was in its pockets.
The sergeant then noticed the papers on the table, read the first sheet and burst out laughing. The heading announced a provisional register of favours supposedly granted in Portugal by His Majesty Dom Miguel I. The first entry named Marcos António de Faria Rebelo, Abbot of São Gens de Calvos, as the king's chief chaplain and Dom Prior of Guimarães. Pílula asked the priest whether that Dom Prior was him and mockingly congratulated him. The next entry read, 'Torcato Munes Elias, Viscount of São Gens, the king's private secretary.' Pílula at once recognised Torcato Nunes, whom he thought he had seen at the Café da Açucena in Cruz de Pedra, Braga. He called him a pauper and rolled up the papers, saying that he would take them to Braga. The troops needed to know the new title holders, he added, so that they could show them proper respect.
Outside the gate, the escort formed up and Veríssimo stood in the centre, his majestic brow lowered and his arms folded. A cry rose from the residence as though a beloved dead man were being carried out: the cook and another maid sobbed, and the abbot hid his face in his hands. Afraid of the troops, the villagers watched from a distance, between the trees and from behind the walls. Torcato Nunes Elias's wife woke him with news of the arrest, and he immediately ran to the residence. He asked the abbot whether the supposed king had taken the gold coins sent by the Botelhas women of Braga. The abbot confirmed that Veríssimo had taken them with him, as of course he would. Nunes, who had no money, asked the abbot for half a moeda and said that he would go to Braga in disguise to find out what was happening. Nunes merely asked for the coin, and the abbot warned him that he might also be arrested. 'My duty is to share the king's fate; where he dies, I shall die,' Nunes declared, still free and theatrically loyal to his companion.