`Thanks; I'll certainly do that.' As Gregory spoke, the two girls emerged from the hotel and Hugo remarked with a smile, `You seem to be making the running very well with our little French friend.'
Gregory laughed. `You've said it, chum. It's a pity her complexion is so sallow and that her chin is inclined to recede. But she is devilish chic, highly intelligent and great fun.'
In the afternoon the Wellesleys took Gregory and Manon for a 'drive through the lovely jungle forests outside Rio. The leaves of the colossal tropical trees displayed a great variety of shape and colour, and giant butterflies bright blue, red, orange and yellow flitted about the roads along which they drove.
The following day, although Gregory was still using a crutch, his ankle was mending so well that, as a change from the luxury of the Copacabana, he took Manon to lunch at a typical Brazilian middle class restaurant called the Churrasaria Gaucha…From a 'passage, having a narrow cactus garden on one side, they entered an area two thirds of which was shaded from the sky only by awnings. In the centre there was a round thatched grill, and all the way down one side a food counter at which people perched on high stools were helping themselves from a great variety of dishes. But there were also scores of tables, some seating as many as twenty people. These tables being occupied entirely by men, one or other of whom was constantly on his feet addressing the others, were evidently used for club lunches. At another big table beyond the grill a wedding breakfast was in progress;; frequent toasts were being drunk there, followed by much cheering. The babel of sound was such that one could hardly hear oneself speak and the place was so packed with people of all shades of colour that Gregory and Manon had to share a table with two enormously fat, colourfully garbed Negresses.
As they could neither read the menu nor find a waiter who could interpret it for them, they had to take pot luck. When the dishes they had chosen arrived they proved so highly spiced that they only toyed with them, and made up on fruit and ices. The quality of the wine, as is nearly always the case with those produced in Brazil, was negligible; but so also was the bill.
Manon did not attempt to hide the fact that she found the atmosphere of the place far from congenial, but Gregory only laughed at her. The motley throng of poor, but laughing, noisy, cheerful people, the men nearly all in shirt sleeves, represented, he felt, the real Brazil, and it pleased him to see them enjoying themselves.
Later in the afternoon they drove right through the city to visit the National Museum, formerly the Royal Palace, which stood in the centre of a very fine park. Gregory had hoped to see a fine collection of the gorgeous feather work cloaks once made by the Brazilian Indians, but there were few exhibits and those were disappointing. He had also expected to see cases filled with shrunken human heads, but could find none. When he asked one of the curators about this, the official told him that the heads had been withdrawn from public exhibition, but he kindly offered to take them to the gallery in which they were stored.
There he produced from a drawer a dozen or more of these gruesome relics. Certain tribes of Indians, believing that to retain the heads of enemies they had killed gave them special powers, had developed the practice of boning these and shrinking them by filling the resulting cavity of flesh with hot sand. This reduced the size of the heads, some of which still had remnants of hair and beards, to the size of very small coconuts. The extraordinary thing was that the shape of the noses, lips and other features had been retained, so that people who had known them in life could have recognised them.
On Saturday, Gregory and James duly set off for Vassouras. At first the way wound up through jungle clad slopes. Before they had gone far they feared they might never reach their destination, for every few miles there had been a landslide and the road was partially blocked; but the Brazilian Government was dealing with the situation most efficiently. Wherever a landslide had occurred there were bulldozers and gangs of men shovelling hundreds of tons of yellow earth off the road and down the slope opposite that from which it had fallen. At these places there was one way traffic and the car had to crawl or skid through half a mile or more of greasy mud, but their driver was a good man. He also spoke enough English to point out to them places of interest along the way.
About twenty miles out of Rio they had climbed high enough to leave the jungle behind and entered an area of lofty, wooded slopes running down to broad lakes, so that in places the road formed a causeway between hundreds of acres of still water. On leaving this delightfully picturesque district they came to a town, to get through which they had to make a considerable detour, in order to reach a bridge that spanned a wide river. The river was still a torrent, the yellow waters lapping the fairway of the bridge, and all the houses along the low river front were still half submerged by the flood.
They had done about two thirds of their journey when their driver pointed out a house just visible through the trees on a hill top to the right of the road, and said, `The fazenda of Dom Pedro Enrique.'
`He is the Pretender to the throne, is he not?' Gregory asked.
`Yes; he and his cousin, who live in Petropolis, are Pretenders equally,' the man replied. `Both very popular.'
`It speaks well for the broadmindedness of a Republican Government to allow Pretenders to reside in their own country,' Gregory remarked.
Ratu James took up the subject. `The Brazilians are most tolerant people. Their Government even goes so far as to pay respect to the two Pretenders. At every State function they are invited to be present.' After a moment he asked, `Do you know much of the history of Brazil?'
`Not much,' Gregory admitted. `Only that in the early days both the French and Dutch endeavoured to oust the Portuguese, but failed. Then for some two hundred years it became a neglected colony ruled from Lisbon. If I remember, it was the Napoleonic wars which led to the Braganza monarchs taking refuge here.'
`That's right.' James nodded his head, crowned with the enormous halo of soft, black hair. `It was the British who pushed Dom Joao, the Prince Regent who was then ruling Portugal in the name of the mad Queen Maria I, into coming here instead of remaining on and becoming a puppet of the French when they invaded his country in 1807.
`As a result of the French Revolution, there had, some years before, been a movement here to break away from Portugal and achieve independence. The revolutionaries were known as the Minas group. They were intellectuals and several of them were poets of some distinction. Their leader was a Lieutenant named Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier; but occasionally he practised dentistry, so he was given the nickname of “The Toothpuller”. The conspiracy was discovered and he was hanged and quartered, but the Brazilians still honour him as a great patriot and “Toothpuller Day” is celebrated as a national holiday.
`The arrival of Dom Joao and his court set Brazilian independence back for thirty three years, and even after that the country remained a monarchy for a further thirty four. But perhaps I am boring you with all this?'
`No, no,' replied Gregory. "Please go on.'
`Well then, squeezed into some forty vessels, fifteen thousand Portuguese nobles and their servants set out as refugees. After fifty two ghastly days they landed in Brazil and made their way to Rio. Naturally, they hated the primitive conditions they found here, but gradually they settled down and with excellent results for Brazil. Formerly no trade had been allowed with any nation except Portugal. Dom Joao opened the ports to all nations. He established a printing press, started the iron and textile industries and encouraged the arts and sciences.
`In due course, the mad Queen died. Dom Joao became King. Napoleon had been defeated and by 1820 it became clear that if Portugal was to be prevented from becoming a Republic, Dom Joao must return and occupy his throne. But he left his heir apparent, Dom Pedro, in Brazil. Unfortunately, the Prince had been badly brought up. He was a kind hearted young man and wanted to be a good ruler, but he was unstable, dissipated and a neurotic.