The Relic

Cover

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pp. c-ii

Title Page, Copyright, Frontispiece

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pp. iii-vi

Contents

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pp. vii-viii

Preface

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pp. ix-xvi

Eça de Queirós (1845–1900) remains the subtlest and most gifted novelist that Portugal has brought forth. The Relic, superbly rendered by Aubrey F. G. Bell, may not be Eça’s masterwork, yet it is a delight, by any standards, and should be widely read and appreciated by discerning American readers. Its startling fusion of comedy and authentic spirituality is...

Prologue

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pp. 1-4

I decided in the leisure of this summer, in my country-house, the Mosteiro, ancestral home of the Counts of Lindoso, to compose the recollections of my life, which in an age so exhausted by intellectual doubts and troubled by the craze for money, contains, as I and my brother-inlaw Crispim think, a clear and strong lesson. In the year 1875, on the...

One

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pp. 5-51

My grandfather was Padre Rufino da Conceição, Licentiate in Theology, author of a devout “Life of St. Filomena” and parish priest of Amendoeirinha. My father, confined to the protection of Our Lady of the Assumption, was called Rufino da Assunção Raposo, and lived at Evora with my grandmother...

Two

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pp. 52-96

It was on a Sunday, the day of St. Jerome, that my Latin feet at length, on the quay at Alexandria, trod the sensual religious land of the East. I rendered thanks to Our Lord of Fortunate Journeys; and my companion, the illustrious Topsius, a German and Doctor of the University of Bonn and member of the Imperial Institute of Historic Excavations, murmured gravely as...

Three

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pp. 97-175

I must have lain asleep two hours stretched dully on my bed, when I seemed to behold a tremulous light like that of a smoking torch entering the tent, and through it a voice called to me in a melancholy tone of lamentation: Teodorico, Teodorico, rise and go to Jerusalem. I threw aside the blanket in fear and beheld the most learned Topsius: in the dim light...

Four

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pp. 176-192

Next day, a radiant Sunday, we struck our tents in Jericho, and journeying with the sun towards the West, through the valley of Cherith, began our pilgrimage into Galilee. But whether because the consoling spring of admiration had dried within me or because my spirit, after being carried away for a moment to the high...

Five

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pp. 193-228