Travelling without intermission, only snatching a hasty meal occasionally at some goatherd’s cabin, or under solitary shades. Sebastian, with his guide, quickly traversed Algarve, penetrated through a pass of the Sierras de Caldaraon successively into the provinces of Alentejo and Estremadura, and at last found himself in the vicinity of his own capital. Having dismissed his guide, he now sought some obscure house where he might make such enquiries as hitherto he had urged in vain: the people whom he questioned could merely tell him that the prior of Crato had, indeed, escaped from Barbary very soon after his capture, and that the cardinal King was declining fast.--Of Donna Gonsalva they knew nothing. In those days information of court changes did not travel down to the lower ranks of society, as it does now in these freer times; newspapers and magazines were then unknown; the titled and the powerful were considered like so many gods, and their actions were as imperfectly known and as rarely scrutinized as if they really dwelt above the clouds.--Sebastian, therefore, was forced to satisfy himself with the belief, that if she had fallen a sacrifice to grief, her death must have become public, he consequently concluded that she was still living in the palace of Xabregas. To Xabregas hastened the young and impassioned lover. While hurrying over the road which led to it, his warm fancy pictured in endless variety the circumstances of their meeting; the well-remembered beauty and enchantments of Gonsalva agitated him to weakness: “Another moment and I shall hold her in my arms!” he exclaimed, hastily advancing to the private gate of her abode. The gate yielded to his hand; he entered, and treading lightly across an angle of the garden, passed into a pavilion whence issued a secret passage leading into the state apartments of the palace. The springs of every door were known to Sebastian; he pressed one, which opening, led him into the subterranean gallery: breathless, trembling, almost flying, he was at the entrance of a favorite room of Donna Gonsalva’s ere he thought of the alarm his appearance might cause her; he paused, and for that instant his limbs failed under him; but the sound of Gonsalva’s voice banished every temperate consideration, new-strung his nerves, and made him suddenly push open the door. Donna Gonsalva was standing alone with her back towards him, she turned round, and Sebastian beheld again that resplendent beauty which had never for a moment been absent from his thoughts.--He rushed forwards and fell at her feet. Overpowered with the violence and the variety of his emotions, her very name expired in sighs on his lips, and he could only cover her hands with kisses and with tears.