Princess María and the Impostor of Don Sebastián

[…] The first in the tent, the second on the field of battle, and the third in a swamp. Philip II, King of Spain, who two hundred leagues away awaited the outcome of the struggle in order to despoil the vanquished, took advantage of the occasion. He ransomed the corpse of Don Sebastian for a hundred thousand escudos, held magnificent funeral rites for him, and, in settlement of accounts, annexed to the crown of Spain the kingdom of Portugal, which regained its independence in 1640, when the House of Braganza ascended the throne.

The widow of Don Sebastian, the beautiful and unfortunate princess María of Portugal, was forced to flee Lisbon and take refuge in Venice. Poor, a fugitive amid that Venice—so brilliant then, so adorned upon those waters where pleasures, banished from the rest of the world, seemed to have taken refuge—Princess María went about bearing her piercing grief.

How great the distance from throne to exile! On one side, vows, blessings, homage; on the other, a barren pity, a cold flattery, and hope—that barrier which God has placed in the heart of man between misfortune and despair; a vein of pure gold cast into a world of granite.

It was not, however, the loss of a crown that most afflicted Princess María. In her sublime resignation she would say: "God gave it to me, God has taken it from me." But resignation is not always enough to console one for the loss of affections. Wounds of the heart bleed longer than others; their traces are harder to erase.

(1) Having learned that Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, war had broken out in Morocco between Muley Mahomet-el-Montaser, sovereign of Fez and Morocco, and Muley-abd-el-Malek, his uncle, who had cast him down from the throne, he crossed to Africa at the head of 30,000 men. Undecided as to which side he should aid, he waited for the moment of finding himself on the very battlefield to decide in favor of the weaker. As Muley Mahomet had only 12,000 men to oppose the 78,000 led by his uncle, Don Sebastian joined the former.

And Princess María could not forget, even after his death, that Don Sebastian whom she had so loved in life. Misfortune rarely overwhelms us by halves. Like lightning, it threatens man, passes without striking him, or kills him. Princess María experienced this. To the loss of her crown, to that of her husband, was added the loss of her mother, a loving and steadfast soul who, in her misfortunes, had been to her what a good mother always is—an angel of patience and tenderness in human form, a ray of divine love beneath an earthly mantle.

This death shattered the last bond that tied Princess María to the earth, for in her mother she had also lost a friend; a friend! that divine manna of which heaven shows itself so sparing, and which gives us two hearts—one to enjoy happiness and one to bear adversity.

On the banks of the Brenta, the princess dwelt in a modest palace with a few servants, faithful chosen souls whom the sight of misfortune had not daunted; she was young, and pleasures did not enter her dwelling; she was beautiful, and no homage of love had been able to cross the threshold of her palace.

Her life was a life of sorrows and pain; she passed her days and nights lamenting and weeping, weighed down under the triple burden of misfortunes of fortune, of affection, and of tyranny; for, distrustful as all tyrants are, Philip II had surrounded her with spies.

That was more than enough to shatter a young soul. In the most somber corner of the park of the palace where she dwelt, there was a chapel, whose moss-covered, blackened walls revealed its most ancient origin. Isolated in that spot, which might be considered the last refuge of prayer, it was as humble as she. Without towers or domes rising insolently into the air as if to hide the baseness of what crawls at their feet, it possessed no coffered ceilings of gold or silver, nor precious hangings, vain trappings of wealth acquired at the expense of poverty's rags; but it was simple, with no ornament but relics, a cross, and a bell, which upon that modest roof seemed better suited to carry earth's prayers to heaven. Princess María had a marble mausoleum erected in memory of Don Sebastian.

From that day, she spent her nights weeping; there, sorrowful prayers were breathed from her soul, of which only God and the angels could count the words and the tears; there, with her knees fixed to the ground, beside that tomb which held nothing but a memory, estranged from all worldly thought, motionless, she seemed one of those funerary angels that adorn tombs and weep as long as the marble of which they are made endures.

One night, more absorbed than ever in her grief and prayer, she was asking God for death, so slow to come to those who suffer. Suddenly, a sound of footsteps struck her ears; she raised her eyes and saw, a few steps away, a man. Terror froze her to the ground.

Wrapped in the folds of a cloak, his face hidden by a wide hood, the stranger had stopped a few paces from her, gazing at her.

"Who are you?" said the frightened princess.

"I am he for whom you weep!"

As he spoke these words, the stranger tore off his hood, threw off his cloak and his rags, and appeared before María's eyes clothed in brocade and gold woven by her own hands shortly before the death of Don Sebastian.

"It is he!" exclaimed the princess... "Blessed be God!"

And the arms of the unknown man received her, fainting; this time it was from joy.

María at first believed herself the plaything of a dream. Yet she listened to this man who recalled to her a whole past of love. The features, the stature, the bearing, the voice—all combined to make her believe he was Don Sebastian. Even one of his hands was longer than the other, a peculiar mark that Don Sebastian owed to a whim of nature. Moreover, the stranger recalled to her a thousand facts, a thousand secret pastimes that only a husband could know.

How, then, could there be room for doubt? She believed that heaven had returned him to her: she believed it all the more because Philip's usurpation and his haste to have Don Sebastian's death certified had cast doubt upon that very death.

"So it is you?" she said to him; "you, whom I have wept for so much! Let me breathe your breath! Let me press you to this heart, which has never beaten but for you. My Sebastian!... Ah! I shall go mad... Then Philip lied... And that corpse he paid so dearly for... And those funeral rites he had performed..."

"Those are fables. To ease my escape, I had the rumor of my death spread, and Philip, to secure his usurpation, resorted to a stratagem. Since then, fleeing his wrath, I have wandered the world for five years; but on learning of your bitter grief, I braved everything to come and console you..."

"I believe you! It is you! Your soul and your features! Could the beating of my heart possibly fail to know you? So I have not lost all happiness! Thank you, my God, thank you!"

And in the midst of her joy she took the stranger's hands, kissed them, threw herself into his arms; she would gladly have knelt before him.

"Moderate your joy, María; our sorrows are not yet over. Philip knows that I live, and trembles to hear my name. He fears I may assert my rights to the throne he has usurped, and he makes me out to be an impostor. I am anathematized throughout Europe, and soon shall be throughout the whole world. Who knows if he will manage to make even you doubt my identity?"

"But for that, he would have to make my heart and my eyes lie! Could he possibly do so?"

"Yes, it is I, who press to my arms my beloved wife, whose constancy and virtues heaven has wished to reward! I am Don Sebastian."

She believed him, and proved it to him.

Dawn surprised them together, and with it appeared a man of sinister countenance, who, advancing toward them, threw off his cloak and showed at his belt the three fatal letters C.D.X. He was an envoy of the terrible Council of Ten.

"In the name of the Republic, I command you to follow me," he said to the prince.

Resistance was impossible. At the officer's word, several armed men had come forward, and from the princess's arms he passed into theirs, and was bound like a bandit.

They took him away; and amid María's cries of despair the following words could be heard: "I swear to devote to the freedom of my king, my husband, my possessions, my honor, my life. He shall reign or..."

The prince was already far away. They locked him in one of the dungeons of the Bridge of Sighs. He was accused of having taken the name of Don Sebastian.

He remained in the dungeon for two years. In his interrogations he confounded the Venetian Senate by the sagacity of his answers, and above all by recalling the most minute details of administration between the Republic and Lisbon. But at last, yielding to Philip's arguments, the Senate tried him, and, declared by the council to be an infamous sorcerer who had taken on the likeness of Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, he was banished from the Republic.

Some Portuguese had him smuggled, disguised as a Dominican friar, to Florence. There the Grand Duke had him seized and sent to Naples to the Count of Lemos, Philip's viceroy. Questioned by this venerable old man, he recalled to him his embassy to Lisbon and a thousand particulars of administration. Before him, as before the Senate of Venice, as everywhere, he never for an instant belied the majesty of a king. He carried it so far that, loaded with chains before the viceroy—who, on account of the heat, stood bareheaded—he commanded him with authority to cover his head in his presence, as befitted a grandee of Spain. Nevertheless, despite his inner conviction, not daring to disobey Philip, whose orders were not defied with impunity, the Count of Lemos had him locked up in the Castel dell'Ovo, a strong fortress bathed by the waters of the sea.

(To be continued)