Kara Aziek divining his fear of having offended, turned on him a look of healing softness, and said kindly, “It is honourable for you both to feel thus differently on the same subject: my Sebastian would have spoken like Gaspar had he not been Sebastian.” Gaspar’s crimsoned face was immediately bathed in tears, he rushed forward, and joining the extended hands of Aziek and her lord within his own, he kissed them vehemently and repeatedly. From that moment the little Blanche became the object of universal interest: De Castro contemplated her as the future sovereign of Portugal, and every time his eye fell on her, he mused over times to come, and lost himself in a labyrinth of anticipation and conjecture. Gaspar spoke no more of her royal birth, but he nourished expectations to which reason gave no sanction: his ardent fancy appointed certain periods for the completion of certain events, and still as those periods passed by without altering the destiny of his King, he only removed his hopes a little further, and beguiled himself with a new delusion. Sebastian alternately delivered up his soul to the full enjoyment of wedded and parental love, (forgetting the world in their Elysium) or pondered with deep solicitude on the future destiny of his child. An adherence to our rights, is next to self-preservation the strongest principle of our nature: this principle yet survived in the breast of Sebastian, struggling against that excess of remorse for a past error, which led him to acquiesce in his obscurity: to this was added the notion of owing to his daughter the inheritance he had received from his ancestors. At each arrival of ships from Europe, the news they brought would render him thoughtful and joyless, for no ray of light broke through the gloom that enveloped Portugal. He heard fresh details of her suffering and her abasement; he heard livelier descriptions of her tyrant’s giant power: he learnt that France was consuming with intestine divisions in her church and state, England waging a perpetual though vigorous contest with jealousy abroad and malecontents at home, and Rome espousing the cause of Philip in his war with the low countries, where the assassination of the brave Prince of Orange, (a deed to which Philip’s gold had bribed the murderer) left the states under the guardianship of a youth, from whose tender years it was folly to expect wisdom. Where then was the country that would receive, where was the potentate that could succour a fugitive King? These considerations frequently discussed with Don Emanuel, and discoursed on in sweet confidence with Gaspar; were sufficient to reconcile Sebastian to the privation of that rank and power which now he coveted solely for his child: nay, sometimes he almost congratulated himself on the leisure his retirement afforded for the culture of her beautiful little body, and her inquiring mind.