Their first meeting was probably due to the relations which Chamilly, an officer of rank, had entered into with the Alcoforados, one of the chief families in Beja. There are indications, indeed, that Chamilly and Marianna’s eldest brother had met, doubtless in the field, for the latter also followed the profession of arms; and this brother, named Balthazar Vaz Alcoforado, is probably the same as the ‘brother’ referred to in the Letters as the lovers’ go-between. It was for his benefit that Marianna’s father had striven for years to build up an estate which was to be entailed on his offspring. But in the year 1669, just at the very time of the great sensation caused by the publication of the Letters in Paris, Balthazar abandoned his military career and all his brilliant prospects in the world to enter the priesthood. It is impossible not to hazard a guess, although we know nothing for certain on the point, that his motive for so doing was connected in some way with the almost tragic ending of the _liaison_ between his sister and the French captain. But to return:--The customs of the time, curiously enough, allowed a greater relative liberty to nuns as regards the visits which might be paid them than to married women,[6] or, as the Bishop of Gram Para puts it, ‘the liberty of the grating was wide in those miserable times.’[7] We cannot of course be expected to give an account of the progress of this _liaison_, nor do we wish to indulge in romantic hypotheses. Chamilly was thirty at the time when he first saw Marianna. Brought up as he had been to war as a trade, a man of small intelligence and few scruples, the intrigue would be a pleasant diversion, a means _pour passer le temps_ which he would otherwise have found dull enough in a Portuguese provincial town after the Paris of ‘Le Grand Monarque.’ The seduction and desertion of a poor nun must have seemed all so perfectly natural to one brought up in contact with the loose morality of camp life and in the France of Louis XIV. * * * * *