Sebastian did not require a second glance at this luminous countenance to decide that Pinto would be the spring and the mover of the Revolution they meditated. After conversing with him awhile, and hearing anew the most momentous details connected with the great event in hand, Sebastian retired, at the pressing instance of his lovely grandchild, who watching the fluctuations of his venerable face, grew fearful that he might suffer from so much emotion, and at length succeeded in leading him to a chamber. Pinto’s arrival in Lisbon was the signal for active measures: each noble hurried to his paternal residence, where they severally employed themselves in secretly securing the support of their tenantry, and their retainers. The clergy awakened the consciences of their parishioners by painting resistance as a duty, submission as a crime; they explained the right of Braganza, while they demonstrated the comparative insufficiency of Philip’s title to the crown of Portugal. The merchants animated each other with the view of their present humiliation and their past power; and the starving artizans whom Pinto sought out and relieved, owing their lives to his generous master, professed themselves eager to risk those lives for his advancement. These springs, though privily worked, were visible in their effects. An impatience of Spanish oppression, with occasional demonstrations of contempt, or of hatred, began to occur in every place; Vasconcellos was alarmed, yet he knew not on whom to fix the eye of suspicion: for Braganza was retired into the bosom of his own family at Villa Viciosa, remote from the capital, enjoying himself as usual in the peaceful pleasures of study, hawking, hunting, and elegant society. The venerable stranger who was now and then to be seen coming forth upon the arm of Luisa to breathe the clear air of the parks, or the sweeter breeze of the gardens, was an object of no curiosity to any of the Spaniards: Braganza’s palace was so often the asylum of age, misfortune, and helplessness, that an individual just standing on the brink of eternity excited no suspicion. Sebastian therefore, dwelt under the protection of the last of his race, in happy security: his sun was about to set; but it was sinking beneath a cloudless horizon, to rise again in the region of everlasting bliss. While his judgment steadily scanned and approved all the sentiments, feelings, and actions of the amiable and admirable Braganza; while he marked the brightness of a soul which no passions obscured, and felt the benign influence of a disposition diffusing happiness like light, he became sensible to a solicitude for the event of the revolution, which entirely banished his long though hardly acquired repose. At every dispatch from Pinto, his aged frame shook with strong emotion; but fortune appeared inclined to favour the good cause, and the heroism of Luisa communicated its own ardour to her parent.