We need not detail the whole of the conversation, which proceeded for a considerable time in the above style: the cool, calculating policy of Father da Costa strongly contrasted with the wild enthusiasm of Malagrida, upon which he worked, while the latter, at the same time, through the ravings of madness, showed a shrewdness and sagacity in worldly matters, where the interests of his order were concerned, which did credit to the school in which he had been educated. When Malagrida had retired--"Stubborn madman that you are," muttered the Superior, "you are yet a necessary and useful tool in the hands of those who know how to wield you, though alone you are like a scythed war-chariot, dragged on by wild horses without a guiding hand, carrying havoc and destruction wherever it appears." Volume 1, Chapter VI. At the time of which we write, the streets of Lisbon were, perhaps, the most rugged, the most ill-lighted, the worst paved, and the most filthy, of any city in Christendom. It is true lanterns were placed before the shrines of the saints, at nearly every corner of the streets; but the glasses of some had been sacrilegiously broken, and the pale lights which glimmered from the rest served but to make more palpable the obscurity of the other part of the way; indeed, it was considered often a service of danger, by the wealthy citizen, to venture out without a torch-bearer and several armed men to protect him from the bands of marauders, who were constantly prowling about, and hesitated at no kind of atrocity. Assassination and robbery were of nightly occurrence; seldom, indeed, was the latter committed without murder; the system of the ruffians being first to plunge their daggers into the bosoms of their intended victims, and then to rifle them. Thus, although private revenge often prompted the deed, as the murdered man was always found stripped of his valuables, he was supposed to have fallen as a chance offering to Siva, and no further notice was taken of the affair; the faint cry of _Acad el rey_! [Note] as the cold steel entered his unguarded bosom, was heard ringing through the night air, and the trembling citizens, fearful of being subpoenaed as witnesses, or accused of the deed, would keep close their doors, and leave the unfortunate wretch to perish unaided, when timely succour might have saved him, should the dagger, by chance, have ineffectually accomplished its work.