“These are the hopes which make me hail my recal: I shall be enabled to ascertain the situation, and to feel the pulse of the Portuguese. After satisfying myself on these points, it is my intention to pass into England or into France, as circumstances may direct; and there, should my sovereign approve the bold design, I may unfold the plan of a quadruple alliance between the four Protestant powers, which could not fail of crushing the general tyrant, and giving peace to Europe.--O Sire! might I but live to be instrumental in bringing you back to your people; might I but live to see a Portuguese Prince wear the crown so long usurped by the very fiend of intolerance, I should think my life nobly filled up, and its duties done.” As De Castro spoke he bent his knee to the earth, and kissed the hand of the King: Sebastian raised him. “Excellent De Castro!” he said, “I have not words to thank you;--here is one that should thank you too, but love makes a coward of her.--What fear you, my Aziek! (he said, fondly turning to her, and resting his lips on her pale cheek,) I am with you--now and for ever with you:--alike inseparable in danger or obscurity, in weal or woe, in life or death!”-- The look, the voice, the words of her Sebastian went at once to the heart of Kara Aziek; she burst into a passion of tears, exclaiming, “Ah! let me ever have thee here--here in these arms!--I ask but to share thy fate, not to oppose thy duties or thy wishes.” “I will have none in which you do not willingly share, my Aziek!” replied Sebastian, tenderly smiling on her, “be assured that the first object still in this heart, is thyself, the next our child; but my first duty is to my country.--Allow me then to risk something for her sake, at least not to turn aside from the favourable avenue thus suddenly opened to me by the hand of Heaven itself?” “And what wouldst thou do, my Sebastian?” asked Kara Aziek, yet clinging to his arm; “wouldst thou quit Brazil, embark in a perilous enterprize, and put thy wife, thy child, thy very existence to the hazard?” This question caused Sebastian to pause and consider what course was best to pursue. De Castro ventured to suggest some arguments against a precipitate confidence in any European power, and those arguments being enforced by the conclusions of Sebastian’s own mind, wrought him to confess that prudence commanded him to remain in South America. Till secure of being acknowledged, received, and supported, either by France, England, or the Netherlands, it would be madness in him to abandon the peaceful retirement in which he lived; and distant as was Brazil, still it was better to remain there unsuspected, than to wander in disguise and apprehension from realm to realm.