nly tenants of
the room, which was small, cedar-panelled and lighted by a girandole of
sparkling crystal. Through the closed door came faintly from the distant
ballroom the strains of the dance music.

With perhaps the single exception of the Principal Souza, the British
policy had no more bitter opponent in Portugal than the Marquis of
Minas. Once a member of the Council of Regency--before Souza had been
elected to that body--he had quitted it in disgust at the British
measures. His chief ground of umbrage had been the appointment of
British officers to the command of the Portuguese regiments which formed
the division under Marshal Beresford. In this he saw a deliberate insult
and slight to his country and his countrymen. He was a man of burning
and blinded patriotism, to whom Portugal was the most glorious nation
in the world. He lived in his country's splendid past, refusing to
recognise that the days of Henry the Navigator, of Vasco da Gama, of
Manuel the Fortunate--days in which Portugal had been great indeed
among the nations of the Old World were gone and done with. He respected
Britons as great merchants and industrious traders; but, after all,
merchants and traders are not the peers of fighters on land and sea, of
navigators, conquerors and civilisers, such as his countrymen had been,
such as he believed them still to be. That the descendants of Gamas,
Cunhas, Magalhaes and Albuquerques--men whose names were indelibly
written upon the very face of the world--should be passed over, whilst
alien officers lead been brought in to train and command the Portuguese
legions, was an affront to Portugal which Minas could never forgive.

It was thus that he had become a rebel, withdrawing from a government
whose supineness he could not condone. For a while his rebellion had
been passive, until the Principal Souza had heated him in the fire of
his own rage and fashioned him into an intriguing instrument of the
first power. He was listening intently now to the soft, rapid speech of
the gentleman in the major's uniform.

"Of course, rumours had reached the Prince of this policy of
devastation," he was saying, "but his Highness has been disposed to
treat these rumours lightly, unable to see, as indeed are we all, what
useful purpose such a policy could finally serve. He does not underrate
the talents of milord Wellington as a commander. He does not imagine
that he would pursue such operations out of pure wantonness; yet if