The Mandarin and other stories by Jose Maria Eca de Queiroz

Author:Jose Maria Eca de Queiroz [Queiroz, Jose Maria Eca de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978 1 907650 34 5
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2011-01-20T21:00:00+00:00

Oh Richard, oh my king,

The world is leaving you.

This provoked the fearsome Gaudêncio, a democrat from the 1820s and an admirer of Robespierre, to snarl bitterly to Macário:

‘Kings – they’re all snakes the lot of them!’

Then Canon Saavedra sang a popular song from Pernambuco often sung in the time of King João VI and entitled: ‘Pretty girls, pretty girls.’ And so the night passed, literary, leisurely, erudite, cultured and buzzing with muses.

Eight days later, on a Sunday, Macário was received into the Vilaça household. The mother had invited him saying:

‘I do hope you’ll be good enough to grace our humble home.’

Even the apoplectic judge who was by her side exclaimed:

‘Humble home! Why, it’s a palace, dear lady!’

Also present that night were the friend in the straw hat, a decrepit old Knight of Malta, confused and deaf, a priest from the cathedral famous for his treble voice, and the Hilária sisters. The eldest sister, having been present (as nanny to a lady from the Casa da Mina) at the bullfight in Salvaterra during which the Count of Arcos was killed, would endlessly retell picturesque episodes from that afternoon: how the Count looked, clean-shaven and with a scarlet ribbon tied in his pigtail; the sonnet recited by a scrawny poet – a hanger-on at the Casa de Vimioso – just as the Count entered the ring on his prancing horse that was harnessed in Spanish style and wore a saddle cloth bearing the Count’s coat of arms embroidered in silver; the terrible tumble a Franciscan friar took from the high barrier and the hilarity of the Court – even the Countess of Povolide was seen clutching her sides in laughter. Then there was King José I, dressed in scarlet velvet embroidered with gold, leaning back in his chair on the dais, fingering his jewel-encrusted snuff box, and behind him, utterly still, stood his physician Dr Lourenço and his confessor; then there was the splendid bullring packed with people from Salvaterra – landowners, beggars, priests, lackeys – and the cry that went up when King José entered: Long live the King! And the people knelt and then the King sat down, eating sweets out of a velvet bag carried by a maid. And then there was the death of the Count, with people fainting, the King bent double, beating with his hand on the parapet, shouting above the hubbub, and the chaplain from Casa dos Arcos who rushed into the ring to administer the last rites. Hilária had been transfixed with fear, she could hear the moans of the oxen, the shrill cries of the women, the hysterical shouting of those who had fainted, then she saw an old man all dressed in black velvet wielding a slender sword and being restrained by various ladies and gentlemen from hurling himself into the ring, bellowing with rage! ‘It’s the Count’s father.’ Then she too had fainted in the arms of a priest. When she came to, she found herself outside the bullring. The royal

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