It was impossible in such circumstances to forbid or prevent plunder when it was obtainable. But, although he was obliged to allow his followers to live on the land, he set his face against any unnecessary pilfering, and one squire, convicted of taking a chalice from a church, he sentenced to be burnt--indeed, the wood was piled and the fire lit before he pardoned him at the instance of his captains. In the teeth of great opposition, too, he resolutely forbade the presence of women in his camp. He was not less renowned for his chivalry towards the weak, women, prisoners, and peasants, than for his victories in battle. He provided pensions for “women who had been honoured and prosperous and were now poor.” But his chivalry went further. A countess at Coimbra who had held out against him, and then plotted to seize his person by treachery, he secured from the reprisals of his followers; the wife of the commander of a captured town he sent away free to Castille. And these were no isolated instances; his conduct never varied in its simplicity, dignity and charming thought for others. His biographers love to tell of the poor blind man of Torres Vedras who had no way of escaping from the advancing Castilians and whom Nun’ Alvarez carried behind him on his mule for four leagues out of the town. “Oo que humano e caridoso señor!” exclaims the old chronicler. But it is the incidents of an illness when he was between thirty and forty that throw most light on his character and on the devoted attachment of those around him. The fever and deep depression that came over him seem to have been in part, at least, due to the perpetual self-seeking and mendicity with which he had to deal now that he was a power in the land as great as the King himself--greater, said his enemies. Sometimes, we are told, he seemed to have recovered from his illness, and then the very sight of a stranger, especially of a man with a letter, would give him a relapse. His secretary found it necessary to intercept all letters. Nun’ Alvarez, who had sought health in vain at Lisbon, set out to return to Evora. Accompanied by his mother and his daughter, he was carried in a litter to Palmella. His illness prevented him from going further, and he was taken to the small village of Alfarrara, where there were many trees and streams. The very sight of the garden of the _quinta_ where he was to lodge seemed to restore his health. Several of the foremost citizens of Setubal came to welcome him, and he received them gladly; but, as they were leaving, one of them (who was very stout) had the misfortune to bid him “remember the town of Setubal.”