On stepping over the threshold I was confronted by a short stout man, between sixty and seventy years of age, dressed in a blue jerkin and grey trousers, without shirt or waistcoat. He looked at me sternly, and enquired in the French language what was my pleasure. I apologised for intruding upon him, and stated that, being informed that he occupied the situation of schoolmaster to the place, I had come to pay my respects to him, and to beg to be informed respecting the manner of instruction which he adopted. He said that whosoever told me that he was a schoolmaster lied, for that he was a brother of the convent. I replied that I had heard that all the friaries had been broken up and the brothers dismissed; whereupon he sighed, and said it was too true. He was then silent for a minute, and his better nature overcoming his angry feelings he produced a snuff-box and offered it to me. The snuff-box is the olive-branch of the Portuguese, and he who wishes to be on good terms with them, or to conciliate them, must never refuse to put his finger and thumb into it when preferred; I took therefore a large pinch, though I detest the dust, and we were soon friendly enough. He was eager to obtain news, especially from Lisbon and Spain. I told him that the officers of the regiments at Lisbon had the day before I left that place gone in a body to the Queen, and insisted upon her either receiving their swords or dismissing her Ministers; whereupon he rubbed his hands and said, 'I am sure that things will not remain tranquil at Lisbon.' Upon my saying that the affairs of Don Carlos were on the decline, he frowned, and said that it could not possibly be, for that God was too just to suffer it. I felt for the poor man, who had been driven from his home in the noble convent close by, and from a state of comfort and affluence reduced in his old age to indigence and misery, for his dwelling seemed to contain scarcely an article of furniture. I tried twice or thrice to induce him to converse on the school, but he always avoided the subject or said shortly that he knew nothing about it; the idea of being a schoolmaster was evidently humiliating to him.