Wanting the resolution, or the means, to seek Portugal, the claimant fell from one state of wretchedness to another, until, at last, it is averred he was discovered by some compatriots in Padua selling pies in the street for a livelihood. Convinced that they had discovered their legitimate sovereign, the Portuguese residents and exiles at once acknowledged his claims, and supplied him with all the necessaries of life. Apprised of this event, the Spanish ambassador immediately requested the Venetian senate to banish the "insolent adventurer" from their states. The Podesta of Padua being commanded by the Seignory to banish from his city within three days "a man calling himself falsely Sebastian, King of Portugal," and this mandate being communicated to the _soi disant_ monarch, he boldly repaired to Venice, and requested the Senate, the only free tribunal in Europe, to investigate his claims. Upon his arrival, he was seized and thrown into a dungeon, at the instance of Philip's ambassador, who suborned witnesses to accuse him of horrible crimes. This, however, caused his pretensions to be speedily noised about all over Europe. A large number of the Portuguese in Italy presented several petitions to the Senate, calling upon it to investigate the prisoner's claims, whilst Sampayo, a Dominican of considerable influence in Padua, wrote and published a full statement of the facts, and dedicated it to the potentates of Europe. In the meantime the Spaniards were not idle. They averred that the claimant was a Calabrese impostor, of bad repute, if not a renegade monk; they alluded to the gross improbabilities in his story, and the little likelihood there was of Sebastian, even if he had escaped from the battle of Alcaçarquivir, remaining out of the pale of civilization for twenty years without affording anyone an intimation of his existence. They pointed out that the pretender's Portuguese was anything but pure, and that whereas Sebastian's complexion was fair this man's was dark. Sampayo, on behalf of the prisoner, replied that the king's wounded pride at his defeat, and youthful feelings of self-dependence, had carried him into all his romantic wanderings, whilst his fair complexion and native accent had necessarily changed during twenty years' rambling in the sultry lands which he had visited.