The finest rooms are the hall of magpies, the hall of swans, and the hall of stags. The first-named is a square apartment with beautiful Moorish tiles, and a coved ceiling covered with paintings of magpies, each one with a motto issuing from its mouth saying, _Por Bem_, “with good intent.” The legend told is that Queen Philippa one day surprised John the Great, who was a gallant lover, kissing a maid of honour and offering her a rose. The Plantagenet queen had a temper of her own, which John probably feared more than the Castilian charge up the slope of Aljubarrota, and the king in exculpation cried to his wife, “Por Bem”; as who should say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_. The reputation of John was such that his excuse passed from mouth to mouth derisively, the queen’s sycophantic maids repeating it with such significant emphasis, and so frequently, that the king to shame them adopted “Por Bem” as his motto, and had his reception hall at Cintra painted with the chattering birds repeating it. [Illustration: MANUELINE WINDOWS IN THE OLD PALACE, CINTRA] Another fine Moorish hall is called the hall of swans, of which the ceiling is painted with those birds, in memory of a pair of them kept in the _patio_ below, and given to King Manuel by his brother-in-law, Charles V., as a very great rarity. Another large apartment, with a conical roof, was constructed by King Manuel himself, who gave to it the name of the hall of stags. Here the king collected the armorial achievements of all the Portuguese nobility. Seventy-four stags are ranged around the room, each one having dependent from its neck the scutcheon of a noble family—except one, that of Tavora, which the great minister Pombal, in the eighteenth century, ordered to be erased—whilst upon a frieze running round the hall is the following verse:— “Pois com esforços e leaes Servicios, foram ganhados, Com estes e outros taes Devem ser conservados.” “By prowess stout and loyal fame These honours bright were gained; By others like or eke the same They needs must be retained.”