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As the narrator reminds his listeners, Father Rocha brought the farce down abruptly, convinced that he was defending morality and punishing the man who had dishonoured Dom Miguel's name. The account finds Veríssimo already under escort, on his way to the Porto Relação and afraid of being transported into exile. Half a league along the Porto road, Veríssimo's refined manners and respectable appearance persuaded the sergeant to let him hire a mule from a muleteer. He sat on the pack saddle without stirrups, held the halter rope and heard the mule's bell throughout the journey. At dusk, he entered Famalicão between twelve soldiers of the 8th regiment.
Torres de Castelões, an administrator, farmer and discreet Legitimist, sent a bed to the prison and allowed Veríssimo to dine with a friend who had followed him from a distance. The friend was Nunes, whom the narrator compares to the faithful Pylades, while turning the dejected Veríssimo into Orestes. Veríssimo complained about his companion's schemes and believed that he was ruined. Above all, he dreaded Libânia's distress when she learnt that he was in the Relação. Nunes knew something about criminal procedure and insisted that there were no grounds for a formal charge. If the lower court committed him for trial, he said, the Relação would overturn that decision. He promised to act for his friend, provided that they did not arrest him too. He then joked that the scheme to obtain one conto de réis was not entirely lost, since Veríssimo already had the Botelhas women's hundred gold pieces. If they had let him be king for another day or two, Nunes added, he would then have had 3750$000 réis. Veríssimo replied that Nunes was joking while he awaited a possible sentence of transportation in prison, listening to the sentry pace beside the bars. At eight o'clock that evening, the prison door closed and Nunes left sadly, regretting that he had placed his friend in that predicament.
At dusk the following day, the prisoner was taken from the Porto Civil Government offices to the Relação under an order entrusted to the sergeant. As he came out, Libânia and Nunes were already waiting for him, for Nunes had gone ahead to find her in Ramalde. Accustomed to life's hardships, Libânia looked at Veríssimo with a courageous expression and a resolute smile. She promised him courage as far as Almeida and, beyond Almeida, courage for ever. At the Relação, Veríssimo was placed in communal room number 2, filled with light and sunshine from a wide window overlooking the Douro. The gaoler told him that Gravito had left that room for the gallows and showed him prisoners' initials dated 1829 in the thick wood of the door. Libânia and Torcato Nunes stayed at the Cantinho Inn in Rua do Loureiro and spent most of their time at the Relação. After six days, Nunes was already seeking the prisoner's release because no formal notice of the charge had yet arrived. The committal order arrived from the Póvoa district on the eighth day, and Veríssimo appealed to the Relação.
The judge reporting on the appeal was Councillor Fortunato Leite, a native of the Douro region. Fifteen years earlier, during Dom Miguel's reign, Fortunato had been Norberto Borges's friend and had become indebted to him. Norberto had warned him the day before that his house would be surrounded on the orders of the magistrate Albano. Later, in 1836, Liberals killed Albano while he was travelling under escort. As he leafed through the case file, the prisoner's surnames and birthplace stirred Fortunato's memories of the persecution he had suffered in 1831 and of the help that had saved him. He made enquiries and confirmed that Norberto Borges of Alvações do Corgo was Veríssimo's father. His benefactor's son was therefore safe, but the personal debt was not the only reason for the decision. The charge had been hasty and irregular, and the priests called as witnesses had said nothing that proved any revolutionary plans.
In his judgement, Fortunato declared that the lower court had disregarded essential procedures. No witness had stated that Veríssimo presented himself as Dom Miguel in order to disturb public order and call the people to revolt. According to the interrogation, a Miguelist priest had almost forced the prisoner to accept being addressed as king. Nor did the case prove, the judge said, that Veríssimo had used the imposture to extort valuables from his courtiers. That lack of proof did not erase the profitable fraud already known to the reader, but it destroyed the legal basis of that committal order. Fortunato added satirically that everything rested on hypotheses, indications and requests for favours made by credulous people, with no uprising or public disturbance. Since the Calvos court had been a Carnival farce, the judge ironically suggested that the seekers of orders, titles and bishoprics themselves deserved to be charged. Taking the joke further, he wrote that many Miguels of that kind might cure the new Sebastianists of their hope of receiving such honours. The appeal judges, with snuff held near their noses, laughed heartily at the ending and signed the judgement unanimously.
The decision was overturned, the lower-court judge paid the costs and Veríssimo regained his freedom. In gaoler Melo's office, he found Libânia faint with joy in the arms of the warder's wife. Libânia wept now that she was happy; the narrator says that she allowed herself to be a woman, whereas earlier, when she had needed to encourage the prisoner, she had laughed with the courage of extraordinary men. Fortunato asked Nunes to send Veríssimo to his house. Norberto's son presented himself fearfully and submissively, yet retained the dignity of an unfortunate Borges Camelo. The judge explained that he had just repaid the debt he owed Norberto, although the two situations were very different. He then calmly condemned Veríssimo's offence and his decision to allow himself to be taken for Dom Miguel. He spoke harshly against the former king and advised Veríssimo to follow the path of honour, work and atonement for his wrongdoing. Veríssimo kissed his hand and refused the ten pintos that the councillor offered him, saying that he would ask for them if he ever needed them. Laughing, Fortunato asked whether the abbots had fallen for the trick and declared that Veríssimo had done well to fleece them. The judge's joke contradicted his own moral lesson and completed the satire of justice. Veríssimo withdrew, deeply grateful.
Fortunato's intervention vigorously changed Veríssimo's outlook and prospects, and also influenced Torcato Nunes Elias. Through the judge's influence, Nunes received a licence to work as a legal agent in the Porto courts. He was clever and diligent, formed useful connections and was paid regularly for his work. He brought his wife and two sons to the city. The two households rented a house in Rua de Trás and lived together in harmony. They managed the remaining 750$000 réis from the Botelhas women carefully, alongside the money Nunes earned from legal work. At night, Veríssimo frequented the Café das Hortas, played quino and sometimes went to the café in Rua de Santo António to listen to the Passos brothers. Those Setembrists welcomed him, tried to draw him towards their ideas and introduced him to other opposition figures. At the same time, it was Veríssimo who reported the Setembrist plans, clubs, Carbonari lodges and Braga conspiracies to Fortunato, a committed Cabralist. Thanks to that information, the civil governor knew about the conspiracies being prepared in Viela da Neta. The narrator adds that this former bastion of Liberty later disappeared beneath a fashion shop, a café and a tavern, commonplace signs of decline. Veríssimo received about six pounds a month, a reward the narrator considers paltry for his services to public order.
During the counter-revolution of 9 October 1846, after the duke's arrest, José Passos met Veríssimo in Praça Nova and called him a patriot. He seized him by the lapels and ordered him to stir up the crowds because the duke was supposedly landing. The bells rang the alarm, and the crowd surged towards Vilar with the roar of a storm. Veríssimo and Nunes sought out Fortunato, who was trembling with fear among his daughters. They said that they would arm themselves to protect their benefactor, and the councillor embraced them emotionally. When the national battalions were formed, Veríssimo and Torcato were promoted to lieutenants in the Vista Alegre battalion. At Valpaços, they concluded that Sá da Bandeira's withdrawal from the Chaves plain foretold defeat. They knew the unsettled spirit of the 15th and 3rd infantry regiments and foresaw that both would change sides. Now nearing forty and marked by many reverses, the two lieutenants decided to desert when the line battalions went over to the royal forces. When the fighting began, they went over under fire from their own battalion along with the two regiments, cheering the Queen and the Constitutional Charter. The narrator attributes their change of side to caution and Fortunato's influence, not to political conversion or military enthusiasm.
When Baron Casal advanced against the Miguelists in Braga, the two lieutenants asked permission to serve in Viscount Vinhais's column. They said that they did not wish to fight face to face against relatives and acquaintances serving in the Miguelist guerrilla bands. Shame, the narrator observes, forced them to gild the lie of their new loyalties. They did not think it decent to attack the abbot of Calvos and other old acquaintances, nor could they bear to see the soldiers plunder the Botelhas women's money. They still had to pursue MacDonald's Royalists from Vila Real to Sabroso, but Viscount Vinhais allowed them to remain at his headquarters. They did not draw their swords, and the bodies found from the Mezio hills to Sabroso, including the Scottish leader, were the work of the advance guards. Although they took part in a deadly civil war, the two men neither shed nor lost a drop of blood themselves. It was, in the narrator's dry phrase, a bloodless triumph.
After the Gramido Convention ended the civil war, they laid down their arms and asked for public posts. Fortunato, the military leaders and the Cabralist centre recommended them to the Crown. Because of his legal knowledge, Nunes was appointed a court clerk in Estremadura. Veríssimo received a profitable post inspecting tobacco and soap in Trás-os-Montes. He was later transferred, on more favourable terms, to the customs office at Viana do Minho. Finally, he obtained a customs directorship overseas. According to the narrator, Veríssimo had still been alive a few years earlier, since a local newspaper had published a notice from him beneath a funerary emblem. Veríssimo Borges Camelo da Mesquita's notice announced that his wife, Libânia de Covas Borges da Mesquita, had died at five o'clock that morning. It also asked friends to excuse him from the customary calls because of his profound grief. After using expressions of mourning that the narrator considers as old as death, the newspaper presented Dona Libânia as a highly educated lady and a member of the illustrious Covas family. The same notice praised the deceased woman's captivating manner, addressed Veríssimo as Councillor-Director and offered him heartfelt condolences. In the newspaper's grand language, that education, lineage and title completed the tribute. Veríssimo and Nunes may still be alive, the narrator concludes, because they were robust in body and spirit.