Though they might command and compel her body, her spirit
remained unfettered in rebellion. Anon the claustral apathy might
encompass her; in time and by slow degrees she might become
absorbed into the grey spirit of the place. But that time was not
yet. For the present she must nourish her caged and starving soul
with memories of glimpses caught in passing of the bright,
active, stirring world without; and where memory stopped she had
now beside her a companion to regale her with tales of high
adventure and romantic deeds and knightly feats, which served but
to feed and swell her yearnings.
This companion, Frey Miguel de Souza, was a Portuguese friar of
the order of St. Augustine, a learned, courtly man who had moved
in the great world and spoke with the authority of an eye-
witness. And above all he loved to talk of that last romantic
King of Portugal, with whom he had been intimate, that high-
spirited, headstrong, gallant, fair-haired lad Sebastian, who at
the age of four-and-twenty had led the disastrous overseas
expedition against the Infidel, which had been shattered on the
field of Alcacer-el-Kebir some fifteen years ago.
He loved to paint for her in words the dazzling knightly pageants
he had seen along the quays at Lisbon, when that expedition was
embarking with crusader ardour, the files of Portuguese knights
and men-at-arms, the array of German and Italian mercenaries, the
young king in his bright armour, bare of head--an incarnation of
St.
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