The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperate atrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in the kingdom who preserved his composure, and that one was Pombal. Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event which had threatened almost a national convulsion, he suffered the whole to become a matter of doubt, and allowed the king's retirement from the public eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. The public despatch of Mr Hay, the British envoy at Lisbon, alludes to it, chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a court mourning--the order for this etiquette, on the death of the Spanish queen, not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that it had been impeded by the king's illness,--"it being the custom of the court to put on _gala_ when any of the royal family are blooded. When I went to court to enquire after his majesty's health, I was there informed that the king, on Sunday night the 3d instant, passing through a gallery to go to the queen's apartment, had the misfortune to fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight different times; and, as his majesty is a fat bulky man, to prevent any humours fixing there, his physicians have advised that he should not use his arm, but abstain from business for some time. In consequence, the queen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness." This was the public version of the event. But appended to the despatch was a postscript, in _cipher_, stating the reality of the transaction. Pombal's sagacity, and his self control, perhaps a still rarer quality among the possessors of power, were exhibited in the strongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single step appeared to be taken to punish, or even to detect the assassins. The subject was allowed to die away; when, on the 9th of December, all Portugal was startled by a royal decree, declaring the crime, and offering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some days afterwards Lisbon heard, with astonishment, an order for the arrest of the Duke of Aveira, one of the first nobles, and master of the royal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis of Tavora, himself, his two sons, his four brothers, and his two sons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits were forbidden to be seen out of their houses.