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As readers already know, Father Rocha abruptly precipitated the end of the farce after the inauguration of that court. He believed that he was avenging morality and punishing with transportation the man who had profaned the most sacred name of Dom Miguel. Already on his way to the Relação, Veríssimo was proceeding under escort along the Porto road. Half a league into the journey, his delicate manners and venerable appearance persuaded the sergeant to let him hire a mule from a muleteer. He mounted the mule's pack saddle, which had a bell but no stirrups, and held the halter rope. Flanked by twelve soldiers of the 8th regiment, he entered Famalicão at dusk.
Torres de Castelões, an administrator who was secretly a Legitimist and a good farmer, sent him a bed for the gaol. He also allowed the prisoner to dine with a friend who had followed him at a distance. It was Nunes, the Pylades of certain and uncertain hours, while Veríssimo played the part of a dejected Orestes. Disheartened, Veríssimo reproached his companion's fantasies and considered himself lost. 'Poor Libânia, when she learns that I am in the Relação!' he lamented. Having some experience of criminal law, Nunes assured him that there were insufficient grounds for an indictment. Even if he were indicted, he added, the Relação would overturn the decision. 'I shall be your legal representative, if they do not arrest me,' he declared, confident in the law and in his own resourcefulness. As for their fantasy of gathering one conto de réis, he joked that not everything was lacking, since Veríssimo already had the hundred gold pieces from the Botelhas ladies. If they had let him be king for another day or two, Nunes calculated, he would have had 3,750,000 réis by that hour. Veríssimo retorted that Nunes was joking while he awaited a sentence of transportation in gaol. He had never experienced the strangeness of hearing the sentry's footsteps brush past the bars of his room. At eight in the evening, once the gaol had closed, Nunes left sadly, stung by remorse for having landed his friend in that predicament.
At dusk the following day, Veríssimo was taken from Porto Civil Government to the Relação, with the gaoler's warrant fixed to the sergeant's bayonet. As he came out, Libânia and Nunes were waiting for him, for Nunes had gone ahead to find her in Ramalde. Libânia was a woman of great strength in facing life's hardships. She looked at him with a glowing face and a bold smile, saying, 'Courage as far as Almeida and, beyond Almeida, courage always!' At the Relação, Veríssimo occupied communal cell no. 2, opened by a broad window over the Douro and flooded with light and sun. The gaoler explained that Gravito had left that room for the gallows. He also showed him, on the thick smooth surface of the door, the initials of former sufferers beside the date 1829.
Libânia and Torcato spent the nights at the Estalagem do Cantinho in Rua do Loureiro and most of their days at the Relação. After six days, Nunes was already petitioning for the prisoner's release because no formal notice of the charge had been given. The indictment from the district of Póvoa arrived on the eighth day. Veríssimo then appealed to the Relação. The reporting judge for the appeal was Councillor Fortunato Leite, a native of the Douro. Fifteen years earlier, during the reign of Dom Miguel, Fortunato had been Norberto Borges's friend and had remained in his debt. On the previous day, Norberto had warned him that his house would be surrounded on the orders of Albano, the magistrate of Vila Real. That magistrate, whom the narrator calls a villain, would be killed by Liberals while under escort in 1836. As he leafed through the case file, the prisoner's surnames, birthplace and circumstances awakened Fortunato's memory of the persecution of 1831 and that extraordinary escape. After making enquiries, he confirmed that Norberto Borges of Alvações do Corgo was Veríssimo's father. His benefactor's son was therefore saved by a personal debt which did not even require great violence to justice, so hasty and irregular had the indictment been. The witnesses, priests suspected of frequenting the Calvos residence, had said nothing that proved any revolutionary designs.
Fortunato drafted an emphatic judgment declaring that the court of first instance had disregarded the most elementary formalities. No testimony showed that Veríssimo had passed himself off as Dom Miguel in order to disturb the established order or summon the people to revolt. The interrogation suggested, on the contrary, that a Miguelist clergyman had all but forced him to accept that name. Nor did the record state or prove that the accused had used the imposture to extort valuables from his courtiers. With the judgment's characteristic irony, Fortunato added that this would, of course, have been the purpose of an impostor bent on despoiling them. The indictment, he concluded, had been unjust and passionately rushed through, with no basis beyond hypotheses and indications. The judgment heaped social insults upon the devotees who had sought commanderies, titles, commissions and mitres, but observed that those favours had caused no riot, public disorder or proven harm in that Carnival farce. Expanding into jocular philosophy, the reporting judge suggested that many Miguels of that kind would do the Minho good, until the new Sebastianists realised that this was the only way they would obtain their dreamed-of honours. With snuff poised beside their noses, the appellate judges laughed at the conclusion and signed the judgment unanimously after inhaling their hissing pinches.
With the sentence overturned and the costs charged to the judge of first instance, Veríssimo regained his freedom. In Gaoler Melo's office, where he went to take his leave, he found Libânia de Covas faint with joy in the turnkey's wife's arms. Now that she was happy, the narrator ironically observes, Libânia allowed herself to be a woman and wept; earlier, when it was her task to encourage the prisoner, she had laughed with the valour of extraordinary men. Councillor Leite instructed Nunes, in his capacity as legal representative, to send Veríssimo to his house. Norberto's son presented himself timidly and apprehensively, with submissive manners that still befitted an unfortunate Borges Camelo. Fortunato explained that he had summoned him to reveal the debt now repaid, although the two situations had been very different. He calmly rebuked Veríssimo's offence and reproached him for having allowed himself to be taken for Dom Miguel. After covering Dom Miguel with political invective, he advised the impostor to follow the path of honour, work and atonement for his misconduct. He was to prove himself worthy of the compassion he had inspired in the judge who had just quashed his indictment. Veríssimo kissed his hand and refused the ten pintos offered, saying that he would ask for them if he ever needed them. Fortunato laughed and asked whether the abbots had truly fallen into the trap, adding that Veríssimo had done very well to fleece those beasts of burden. Veríssimo withdrew, stepping backwards in deep gratitude before such contradictory mercy.
Councillor Fortunato exerted a vigorous influence, capable of reshaping the ideas and prospects of Veríssimo Borges and, to a considerable extent, those of Torcato Nunes Elias. Through the good judge's mediation, Nunes obtained a licence to act as a legal agent in the courts of Porto. He formed useful connections, for he was clever, diligent and made sure that he was paid regularly. He brought his wife and two sons to the city. The two families rented a house in Rua de Trás and lived together very amicably. They lived economically, combining the remaining 750,000 réis from the Botelhas money with the legal agent's earnings. At night, Veríssimo frequented Café das Hortas, played quino and appeared at the café in Rua de Santo António to hear the supporters of the Passos brothers, who welcomed him and tried to convert him. He also cultivated relations with several figures of the Porto opposition, without that company making him loyal to their cause. It was Veríssimo, not Nunes, who told Councillor Leite, an uncompromising Cabralist, what he heard. He reported the Septembrist plans, the clubs, the Carbonari lodges and the schemes prepared in Braga by a network of conspirators. The civil governor thus received news of the conspiracies in Viela da Neta, a former bastion of Liberty which the narrator already sees buried beneath a fashion shop, a café and a tavern. For these services to order and civic tranquillity, Veríssimo received about six pounds a month, a payment the narrator calls meagre.
During the counter-revolution of 9 October 1846, once the duke had been arrested, José Passos found Veríssimo in Praça Nova, called him a patriot and urged him to stir the masses because the duke was landing. The bells sounded the alarm and the crowd surged towards Vilar with the roar of a storm. Amid that turmoil, Veríssimo and Nunes sought out Fortunato, who was trembling with fear among his daughters. They told him that they would arm themselves and stand guard over their benefactor's safety, whereupon he embraced them in near-apoplectic emotion. When the national battalions were subsequently formed, both men were promoted to lieutenants in the Vista Alegre battalion. During the fighting at Valpaços, they understood that Sá da Bandeira's withdrawal from the plain of Chaves foretold defeat. They knew the treacherous temper of the 15th and 3rd infantry regiments and foresaw that they would change sides. Without enthusiasm and with the prudence of forty-year-olds already battered by the reverses of twenty battles, the two lieutenants deliberated at length. They resolved to desert as soon as the regular battalions went over to the royal forces. When the clash began, the two regiments surged towards Casal's vanguard shouting, 'Long live the Queen!' Under fire from their own battalion, Veríssimo and Torcato followed them and cheered the Constitutional Charter. The narrator attributes that change of sides, without ideological heroism, to prudence and to Councillor Fortunato Leite.
When the Baron of Casal went to Braga against the Miguelists, the lieutenants asked leave to serve in the Viscount of Vinhais's column, saying that they did not wish to face relatives and acquaintances in the guerrilla bands of Fathers Casimiro José Vieira and José da Laje. Shame obliged them to gild that lie, for they did not consider it decent to slash at Cristóvão Bezerra, the Abbot of Calvos or Father Manuel das Agras, or to witness the looting of the Botelhas ladies' money. Even so, they could not avoid pursuing the Royalists in MacDonald's company from Vila Real to Sabroso. Admitted by Vinhais to headquarters, they never drew their swords, while the bodies found from the Serra do Mezio to Sabroso, where the Scottish leader died, were left to the account of the advance guards. In that fratricidal struggle, the two lieutenants neither gave nor took a drop of blood, an achievement the narrator sums up as a dry triumph.
When the civil war ended with the Gramido settlement, they laid down their arms and asked for public posts. Fortunato, Casal, Vinhais and other influential figures from the Cabralist centre recommended them to Her Majesty's consideration. Because he knew the law, Nunes was appointed a court clerk in Estremadura. Veríssimo Borges obtained a profitable inspectorate of tobacco and soap in Trás-os-Montes. He was then transferred, to his advantage, to the customs house at Viana do Minho and finally to an overseas customs directorate. The narrator concludes that Veríssimo was still alive a few years earlier because a local newspaper had published a notice from him. Beneath a funerary emblem, an angel bent over an urn draped in mourning by the branches of a weeping willow. In the notice, Veríssimo Borges Camelo da Mesquita informed his numerous and respectable friends that God had called into His presence, at five o'clock that morning, his lamented wife, Dona Libânia de Covas Borges da Mesquita. In his profound grief, he also asked to be excused from receiving condolences in person. After mournful adjectives which the narrator calls as old as death, the newspaper presented the deceased as a lady of the most refined education, a member of the illustrious Covas family and a model of gracious conduct on that island. The newspaper addressed its condolences to the 'Most Excellent Councillor-Director', elevating Veríssimo too through the pomp of public language.
Veríssimo and Nunes may still be alive, for they were robust in body and spirit.