Part 28 (2/2)
But I was soon driven from this cloudless, peaceful situation, by a confounded jingle of all the bells; then followed a most complicated sonata, banged off on the chimes by a great proficient. The Marquis, who had climbed up on purpose to enjoy this cataract of what some persons call melodious sounds at its fountainhead, would have me approach to examine the mechanism, and I was half stunned. I know very little indeed about chimes and clocks, and am quite at a loss for amus.e.m.e.nt in a belfry. My friend, who inherits a mechanical turn from his father, the renowned patron of clocks and time-pieces, investigated every wheel with minute attention.
His survey finished, we descended innumerable stairs, and retired to the Capitan Mor's, whose jurisdiction extends over the park and district of Mafra. He has seven or eight thousand crusadoes a year, and his habitation wears every appearance of comfort and opulence. The floors are covered with mats of the finest texture, the doors hung with red damask curtains, and our beds, quite new for the occasion, spread with satin coverlids richly embroidered and fringed. We had a most luxurious repast, and a better dessert than even the monks could have given us--the Capitan Mor taking the dishes from his long train of servants, and placing them himself on the table, quite in the feudal style.
After coffee we hurried to vespers in the great church of the convent, and advancing between the range of illuminated chapels, took our places in the royal tribune. We were no sooner seated than the monks entered in procession, preceding their abbot, who ascended his throne, having a row of sacristans at his feet and canons on his right hand, in their cloth of gold embroidered vestments. The service was chaunted with the most imposing solemnity to the awful sound of organs, for there are no fewer than six in the church, all of an enormous size.
When it was ended, being once more laid hold of by the nimble lay-brother, we were conducted up a magnificent staircase into the palace. The suite extends seven or eight hundred feet, and the almost endless succession of lofty doors seen in perspective, strikes with astonishment; but we were soon weary of being merely astonished, and agreed to p.r.o.nounce the apartments the dullest and most comfortless we had ever beheld; there is no variety in their shape, and little in their dimensions. The furniture being all locked up at Lisbon, a naked sameness universally prevails; not a niche, not a cornice, not a curved moulding breaks the tedious uniformity of dead white walls.
I was glad to return to the convent and refresh my eyes with the sight of marble pillars, and my feet by treading on Persian carpets. We were followed wherever we moved, into every cell, chapel, hall, pa.s.sage, or sacristy, by a strange medley of inquisitive monks, sacristans, lay-brothers, corregidors, village-curates, and country beaux with long rapiers and pigtails. If I happened to ask a question, half-a-dozen all at once poked their necks out to answer it, like turkey-polts when addressed in their native hobble-gobble dialect. The Marquis was quite sick of being trotted after in this tumultuous manner, and tried several times to leave the crowd behind him, by taking sudden turns; but sticking close to our heels, it baffled all his endeavours, and increased to such a degree, that we seemed to have swept the whole convent and village of their inhabitants, and to draw them after us by one of those supernatural attractions we read of in tales and romances.
At length, perceiving a large door open into the garden, we bolted out, and striking into a labyrinth of myrtles and laurels, got rid of our pursuers. The garden, which is about a mile and a half in circ.u.mference, contains, besides wild thickets of pine and bay-trees, several orchards of lemon and orange, and two or three parterres more filled with weeds than flowers. I was much disgusted at finding this beautiful inclosure so wretchedly neglected, and its luxuriant plants withering away for want of being properly watered.
You may suppose, that after adding a walk in the princ.i.p.al alleys of the garden to our other peregrinations, we began to find ourselves somewhat fatigued, and were not sorry to repose ourselves in the Abbot's apartment till we were summoned once more to our tribune to hear matins performed. It was growing dark, and the innumerable tapers burning before the altars and in every part of the church, began to diffuse a mysterious light. The organs joined again in full accord, the long series of monks and novices entered with slow and solemn steps, and the Abbot resumed his throne with the same pomp as at vespers. The Marquis began muttering his orisons, the Grand Prior to recite his breviary, and I to fall into a profound reverie, which lasted as long as the service, that is to say above two hours. Verdeil, ready to expire with ennui, could not help leaving the tribune and the cloud of incense which filled the choir, to breathe a freer air in the body of the church and its adjoining chapels.
It was almost nine when the monks, after chaunting a most solemn and sonorous hymn in praise of their venerable father, Saint Augustine, quitted the choir. We followed their procession through lofty chapels and arched cloisters, which by a glimmering light appeared to have neither roof nor termination, till it entered an octagon forty feet in diameter, with fountains in the four princ.i.p.al angles. The monks, after dispersing to wash their hands at the several fountains, again resumed their order, and pa.s.sed two-and-two under a portal thirty feet high into a vast hall, communicating with their refectory by another portal of the same lofty dimensions. Here the procession made a pause, for this chamber is consecrated to the remembrance of the departed, and styled the Hall de Profundis. Before every repast, the monks standing round it in solemn ranks, silently revolve in their minds the precariousness of our frail existence, and offer up prayers for the salvation of their predecessors. I could not help being struck with awe when I beheld by the glow of flaming lamps, so many venerable figures in their black and white habits bending their eyes on the pavement, and absorbed in the most interesting and gloomy of meditations.
The moment allotted to this solemn supplication being pa.s.sed, every one took his place at the long tables in the refectory, which are made of Brazil-wood, and covered with the whitest linen. Each monk had his gla.s.s caraffe of water and wine, his plate of apples and salad set before him; neither fish nor flesh were served up, the vigil of St.
Augustine's day being observed as a fast with the utmost strictness.
To enjoy at a glance this singular and majestic spectacle, we retreated to a vestibule preceding the octagon, and from thence looked through all the portals down the long row of lamps into the refectory, which, owing to its vast length of full two hundred feet, seemed ending in a point.
After remaining a few minutes to enjoy this perspective, four monks advanced with torches to light us out of the convent, and bid us good-night with many bows and genuflections.
Our supper at the Capitan Mor's was very cheerful. We sat up late, notwithstanding our fatigue, talking over the variety of objects that had pa.s.sed before our eyes in so short a s.p.a.ce of time, the crowd of grotesque figures which had stuck to our heels so long and so closely, and the awkward vivacity of the lay-brother.
LETTER XXIII.
High ma.s.s.--Garden of the Viscount Ponte de Lima.--Leave Mafra.--An accident.--Return to Cintra.--My saloon.--Beautiful view from it.
August 28th, 1787.
I was half asleep, half awake, when the sonorous bells of the convent struck my ears. The Marquis and Don Pedro's voices in earnest conversation with the Capitan Mor in the adjoining chamber, completely roused me. We swallowed our coffee in haste; the Grand Prior reluctantly left his pillow, and accompanied us to high ma.s.s. The monks once more exerted their efforts to prevail on us to dine with them; but we remained inflexible, and to avoid their importunities hastened away, as soon as ma.s.s was ended, to the Viscount Ponte de Lima's gardens, where the deep shade of the bay and ilex skreened us from the excessive heat of the sun.
The Marquis, seating himself by me near one of those clear and copious fountains with which this magnificent Italian-looking garden is refreshed and enlivened, entered into a most serious and semi-official discourse about my stay in Portugal, and the means which were projecting in a very high quarter to render it not only pleasant to myself, but of some importance to many others.
I felt relieved when the appearance of Don Pedro and his uncle, who had been walking to the end of an immensely long avenue of pines, warded off a conversation that began to press hard upon me. We returned altogether to the Capitan Mor's, and found dinner ready.
Both Don Pedro and myself were sorry to leave Mafra, and should have had no objection to another race along the cloisters and dormitories with the lay-brother. The evening was bright and clear, and the azure tints of the distant sea inexpressibly lovely. We drove with a tumultuous rapidity over the rough-paved roads, that the Marquis and I could hardly hear a word we said to each other. Don Pedro had mounted his horse.
Verdeil, who preceded us in the carinho, seemed to outstrip the winds.
His mule, one of the most fiery and gigantic of her species, excited by repeated floggings and the shout of a hulking Portuguese postilion, perched up behind the carriage, galloped at an ungovernable rate; and at about a league from the rocks of Cintra, thought proper to jerk out its drivers into the midst of some bushes at the foot of a lofty bank, nearly perpendicular, where they still remained sprawling when we pa.s.sed by.
Verdeil hobbled up to us, and pointed to the carinho in the ditch below.
Except a slight contusion in the knee, he had received no hurt. I exclaimed immediately, that his escape was miraculous, and that, doubtless, St. Anthony had some hand in it. My friend, who has always the horrors of heresy before his eyes, whispered me that the devil had saved him this time, but might not be so favourably disposed another.
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