I do not pretend to pierce the mysterious veil thrown over the transactions of that country, nor to assert the tale of their actually crowning one of their order. It is sufficient to say that the Court of Lisbon had entertained the strongest jealousy of their proceedings; had determined to break the charm by which they excluded their own Sovereign from interfering in his own domain; and had actually engaged that upright Pontiff, Benedict XIV., to discountenance their ambitious proceedings. The fathers even apprehended severe decrees from the Vatican. At that crisis the life of the King of Portugal was attempted--no wonder the Jesuits were suspected. The Court of Lisbon, which in its confusion had formed so improbable a story to account for the disappearance of the King, did not act by any means, in its subsequent proceedings, with equal inconsideration. The consequences of this affair ran into the following year; but being totally unconnected with every transaction that I propose to relate, I shall throw the whole of this Portuguese history into this place. The first Minister was Carvalho,[28] a bold, politic man, who hated the Jesuits. For some months the Court observed a total silence: nobody was apprehended, no suspicion discovered. Till Carvalho had got a clue that led to the darkest recesses of the mystery, it was affected to forget or treat the whole as an accident of a private nature. How he wound himself into the secret I do not pretend to say: there were many accounts, probably mere conjectures: it is an anecdote never likely to be known. The first notification to the public that the conspiracy was discovered, was made by seizing at the same instant, at a ball, the whole families of Tavora and Aveiro, houses of the first rank and noblest birth in Portugal, and the chiefs of which were possessed of the greatest posts and employments about the King. To them, till assembled in the snare, the King wore a face of the most unsuspecting favour.