They were the
only 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.
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