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Frei João could no longer understand his penitent. The narrator supposes that Marta's disclosures seemed profoundly confused to him. For that reason, the friar suspected that she was possessed and the victim of an incubus demon. Feliciano disagreed with the exorcist when the latter asked him for details of the bedchamber. The husband merely reported what he observed. Marta spent most of the day praying from the book in the oratory. On some days she ate well; on others, she ate nothing. She did not speak to the maids or take part in running the household. She also spoke little to Feliciano and did not appear to lose control. According to him, Marta slept well and continued to share her husband's bed. However, Feliciano sometimes awoke and found her sitting up. Marta would then keep her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“That is it, then,” Frei João would interrupt.
“What is it, Frei João?” Feliciano would ask.
The confessor could not explain himself freely. He followed a manual by Brognolo, enlarged by the Arrábida friar-master Frei José de Jesus Maria. The book ordered signs of possession to be hidden from third parties. The exorcist was to speak only when prepared for combat and standing before the enemy. In this case, the equipment was a stole, holy water and Latin. The narrator calls Latin a language familiar to the Devil. There was also the inviolable seal of confession. Decent charity, the rule said, should keep Feliciano in ignorance. He was not to know of a demon's supposed adulterous attempts in the likeness of José Dias. With the vicar of Caldelas, however, Frei João was less reserved. He assured Father Osório that the brasileira of Prazins was gravely possessed. Osório let out an involuntary smile, like the nausea of a seasick passenger. The former friar saw a heretical turn in that gesture. He asked Osório whether he had any doubt.
“I have one small doubt, Frei João,” the vicar answered without fear. “I cannot accept that the Devil, being a son of God, is the wicked being who makes poor Marta suffer.”
“The Devil, a son of God!” cried Frei João, raising his hands to his forehead. He called the statement an enormous blasphemy and pronounced an anathema.
“Anathema to logic and reason, then,” Osório replied calmly, with a smile.
Frei João called it the logic of Calvin and Voltaire.
Osório replied that it was merely the logic taught at the seminary in Braga. “Is a creator not also a father?” he asked.
Frei João admitted that he was and asked where Osório was going with this.
Osório proceeded with his syllogism. “God is the father of all his creatures; the Devil is God's creature; therefore God is the Devil's father.”
“Distinguo!” the missionary protested.
The vicar ignored the scholastic interruption.
If God was good, Osório said, his creatures could not be evil. If the Devil was evil, he could not be God's creature. And if he had not been created by God, who was the Devil's father? Osório attributed the question to an African man who had put it to another missionary.
Frei João repeated “Distinguo!” and relied on the old formulas of dialectic. He explained that God had created the angels, but some had rebelled. Those angels were cast out of Heaven and became infernal spirits. Some did not descend into darkness and remained in the murky air to punish humankind. He quoted Saint Augustine in Latin on that prison of demons until Judgement Day. According to the friar, God allowed demons to torment creatures because of the good that might result. He invoked Saint John's Gospel: “All things were made through Him.” Therefore, he concluded, if God allowed evil, that evil must produce some good. He still acknowledged that evils were not goods, but did not resolve the contradiction.
Osório was about to reply, but Frei João forestalled him triumphantly.
He declared, with Saint Thomas, that God could find good without evil, but never evil without some good. God allowed the Devil as a healthy exercise for humankind. He again cited Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas to justify the evils caused by wicked angels. He said that there were twelve reasons why God allowed demons to torment human beings. He began with the punishment of the stubborn sinner in this world and the next. He had barely begun the second reason when Osório interrupted him.
“I am convinced, Frei João; Your Reverence has already cleared up my doubt.” He summarised that God used demons to purify sinners, both being creatures of divine justice.
Frei João replied with satisfaction: “That is exactly right.”
Osório carried the irony further. The sinner's inner demon would be purified by the action of another external demon. Both would be creatures of divine love. God thus seemed like a father who whipped his beloved child so that the child would receive pain as affection. “What a fine father!” the vicar concluded. Then, with bitterness, he admitted that he feared for the Church itself. Superstitions might bring down Catholicism, which had defeated the lies of idolatry with the weapons of truth. He ended with Christ's Latin words: “Ego sum veritas.”
Frei João was preparing another crushing reply. At that moment, the other missionaries arrived for the farewell dinner at Feliciano's house.
The mission had ended, and the priests were leaving for Barcelos. Frei João stayed behind to rid poor Marta of the demon he imagined within her. He stayed at the Revolta estate. In the estate chapel, he celebrated Mass and heard the confessions of his spiritual daughters. The narrator describes them as insatiable for the bread of angels. After communion, they spent their time dozing in churchyards, picking off their own fleas and discussing other people's lives.
Frei João prepared all the objects he considered dangerous to the Devil. He was determined to fight and armed the woman he called an energumene. He hung a fragment of the True Cross and a breve da Marca around her neck. He added an image of Saint Benedict and the Athanasian Creed. He added little Jerusalem crosses and an image of Saint Anastasius's head. There were also saints' relics and splinters of bone stuck to scraps of cloth. The friar had also brought prayers written in his own hand. He kept them in little bags worn by the sweat of other women considered possessed.
Marta was to fast in preparation. The narrator remarks that the Devil seemed to prefer stomachs warmed by food. The exorcist also fasted, in accordance with his manuals. He advised Feliciano to do the same, relying on a passage from Saint Matthew. According to the quotation, certain devils came out only through prayer and fasting. Feliciano said that he was fasting. Hidden from the friar, however, he ate ham steaks with eggs. He was beginning to concern himself chiefly with his own food and rest. He also showed cynical contempt for the part the Devil was supposed to have taken in the family.
Frei João listed for the vicar of Caldelas the strong signs of the supposed possession.
The first was Marta hearing José Dias call her both in sleep and while awake. The friar pointed to the corresponding Latin phrase in the manual. Marta felt an aversion to meat and bread and had little appetite. Osório observed that this might be nausea caused by pregnancy. Frei João smothered the objection with another passage in Latin. Marta's difficulty in digesting food became another sign. The book also attributed that difficulty to the Devil. Marta wept without explaining why she was weeping. To the exorcist, this was certainly the Devil's work. The thirteenth sign supplied him with the strongest proof of the supposed incubus. It seems that Marta had confessed to repugnance and submissions that had been forced upon her. She was also said to have reported that she resisted her husband's caresses. Perhaps the image of José Dias appeared in those struggles in the bedchamber. The narrator does not present those words as a transcript of the confession. He deduces everything from the thirteenth sign that Frei João pointed out in the manual. That sign said in Latin that husband and wife might be unable to approach one another. One of them saw, or believed they saw, another body between them.
“This is the crucial point!” Frei João said, hammering the page with his forefinger.
Osório asked whether that vision might not be the beginning of mental alienation. He observed that Marta was weighed down by deep sorrow connected with the past. Could the friar not see how weak and melancholy she was?
Frei João replied that melancholic people were those most persecuted by the Devil. He told Osório to consult Galen and Avicenna, who were cited in Brognolo. He leafed through the manual until he found the passage he considered triumphant.
“Read it and you will see that madness can be the Devil's work,” he ordered.
Father Osório read with a curiosity that the narrator calls ignorant. The passage claimed that demons chiefly attacked melancholic people. The melancholic humour was said to be difficult to remove, rebellious and disobedient. It was also said to be capable of producing various incurable illnesses. If it was excessively dry, it was said to harm the membranes of the brain and drive the person mad. If it reached the ventricles, it was said to cause apoplexy, rage, frenzy and hatred. The manual concluded that the Devil often produced those effects.
Frei João noticed that Osório was laughing and became furious. He said that he had heard an accusation against the vicar from the abbot of Santiago de Antas. According to the abbot, Father Osório was unreliable in matters of faith. His sermons were said to have a certain heretical smell. Moreover, Osório valued quinine more highly than miracle-working saints against fevers.
Osório replied that if this was heresy, he was completely lost. He then declared that he would rather treat Marta with shower baths, sedatives and distractions. If those measures failed, he would place her in an asylum for women. In his view, Marta was the daughter of a mad woman and the granddaughter of other sufferers. He predicted that someone would yet see her lose her reason completely. He called the illness the demon of hereditary madness. Neither shower water nor holy water guaranteed a cure for that illness. Before attempting exorcisms, Frei João should consult the doctors.
Frei João smiled scornfully at what he called poor medicine. He said that he already knew everything the doctors would say. The remedy of exorcism had not been invented by him, but handed down by Christ's Church. The divine Master himself had used it, he insisted. He asked whether Osório denied the authority of the Gospels and the demons cast out by Jesus.
Osório replied that he knew the story of the legion that had entered the pigs.
Frei João protested that the sacred books were full of such facts. They were not stories, he declared, but facts.
Osório then asked whether the life and miracles of Jesus Christ did not belong to history. “If they do not, that is troubling,” he added.
The argument continued and became bitter. Osório scandalised the former friar's pious ears. Frei João placed his hands on his breast and his eyes on Heaven. He cited Saint Paul to say that scandals were necessary. Feliciano interrupted them with the news that Marta had suffered an attack in the garden. Frei João entered the bedchamber to which she had been carried. Osório remained behind to hear the governess's account.
She had been at the tank rinsing handkerchiefs when Marta entered the orchard. Marta passed her without seeming to notice a living soul. Then she began cutting roses. She said that they were for her beloved and husband, José Alves. The governess asked Osório who that José Alves might be.
The priest merely asked what had happened next.
Marta had sat beneath the vine and wept with the bunch of roses close to her face. Soon afterwards, she had fallen sideways, flailing her arms and legs. The governess had called the cook, and together they had carried her unconscious to the bedroom. In the governess's opinion, José Alves had been a sweetheart from Marta's unmarried days. She had heard that Marta had been forced to marry that herring of an uncle. “That is what comes of marriages like these,” she concluded.
Father Osório did not explain to the governess who José Alves was. When Feliciano announced that the exorcisms were about to begin, Osório decided to leave. He gave his parish duties as the reason.
Before leaving, he warned Feliciano not to let the exorcisms torment his niece too severely. He repeated the advice of Father Roque, an elderly, learned and virtuous man. Feliciano should travel with Marta and take her to the capital. They should return only when she was diverted, contented and eating well.
Feliciano replied that he knew perfectly well that the exorcisms were nonsense. Nevertheless, the friar had installed himself in his house. He said that he would not leave without curing Marta. Feliciano also said that he could not leave Minho at that time. He was waiting for the late Cerveira de Quadros's sons to gamble away part of their inheritance in Porto. They had received several contos de réis on their father's death. Feliciano wanted to buy their Ermida estate, which adjoined his own. Another returned emigrant from Brazil also had his eye on the property. As for Marta, Feliciano intended to take her for sea bathing later. He would also buy Raspail's Manual and look up the illness in the book. He claimed that in Pernambuco every kind of illness was cured by Raspail. Finally, he told the Devil to take the friar and the bad luck of the exorcisms.
Father Osório agreed ironically that he should buy Raspail's Manual. Then he left, thoroughly exhausted. He told his sister that he was exhausted from dealing with the two asses, Frei João and Feliciano.