It may be said that for the Governor of a great Empire to leave himself without the means “to buy me a Hen” was the height of extravagance, but that is only the cavil of a more mundane spirit, incapable of attaining so heroic a sublimity, and his countrymen, at least, have always been grateful to Castro for ostentatiously proving that amid all the prevailing corruption there remained one honest man. Like Albuquerque and Gama, he died in harness. But, great as Castro was as a soldier, he would in all probability have been no less celebrated for his services to literature had it been granted him to spend his old age in the quiet of his shady _quinta_. Couto ends his portrait of the Viceroy thus: “And for his great charity, temperance, disinterestedness, exceeding love of God, and other qualities of a good Christian, it may be affirmed that he will be receiving in glory the prize and guerdon of all his trouble and toil.” By his energy, vigour of thought and action, by his splendid character, humane and resolute, he closed the most brilliant half-century of Portugal’s history with a key of gold. FOOTNOTES: [19] The Emperor, who was the Prince’s cousin and brother-in-law, welcomed him with open arms at Barcelona. On one occasion, when neither would go through a door before the other and the Emperor insisted on Prince Luis being the first to pass, the latter seized a torch from one of the pages and so preceded him. [20] In a letter to King João III from India he recalls all his services since the age of eighteen and says: “For the love of God and in reward for these services I beg your Highness to allow me to return to Portugal to live with my wife and children and end the few troubled days that remain to me in the Serra de Cintra,” and in 1540 he writes to Prince Luis that only the arrival of a Turkish fleet in India will prevent him from returning to Portugal. [21] Then, as in the Middle Ages, the beard was considered an honourable pledge, and men swore by it as Zeus might swear by the River Styx. Albuquerque in India had given some hairs of his beard to a soldier and afterwards redeemed them by a payment of money. [22] From Sir Peter Wyche’s picturesque seventeenth-century translation of Jacinto Freire de Andrada’s _Life of Dom João de Castro_. [23] Wyche’s version. _Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._ Transcriber’s Notes A few minor errors in punctuation have been corrected. The spelling of “King Diniz” changed to “King Dinis” in a few spots throughout the text.