IN DON QUIXOTE'S CHAMBER
The cannon of the civil war having been silenced, hatreds and maledictions burst forth. Vengeance! Vengeance! was the cry that went up all over the land from north to south, sowing terror among the Miguelists. In the midst of all these unleashed passions, Dom Pedro alone preserved his serenity. He alone vainly raised his voice to call for a little tolerance for the vanquished.
The siege of Oporto had irremediably undermined his health, and so many hardships and heavy cares had reduced him to a human wreck. At the age of thirty-six, this muscular man of action, the tamer of wild horses, was an impressive ruin; only his eyes held something of their old-time glow and brilliancy. The excesses of the liberals grieved him to the heart. They would have made of him his brother's executioner, an avenging arm, but he refused. He had not come to Portugal to rear scaffolds but to institute a regime of liberty and justice.
On May 27, 1834, when the magnanimous terms of EvoraMonte became known, there were noisy demonstrations, and the mob in its indignation even went so far as to hurl mud and stones at his carriage. In the theater of São-Carlos that night, there was an atmosphere of mutiny as Dom Pedro came in. Printed copies of the Convention were circulating through the audience, together with subversive manifestoes, and the troops refused to
-208-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Every Inch a King:A Biography of Dom Pedro I, First Emperor of Brazil.
Contributors: Sérgio Corrêa Da Costa - Author, Samuel Putnam - Translator.
Publisher: Macmillan.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1950.
Page number: 208.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
- Georgia
- Arial
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- Courier/monospaced
Reset