A Cidade e as Serra. The city and the mountains

“O meu amigo Jacinto nasceu num palácio, com cento e nove contos de renda em terras de semeadura, de vinhedo, de cortiça e de olival. No Alentejo, pela Estremadura, através das duas Beiras, densas sebes ondulando por colina e vale, muros altos de boa pedra, ribeiras, estradas, delimitavam os campos desta velha família agrícola que já entulhava grão e plantava cepa em tempos de el-rei D. Dinis. A sua quinta e casa senhorial de Tormes, no Baixo Douro, cobriam uma serra. Entre o Tua e o Tinhela, por cinco fartas léguas, todo o torrão lhe pagava foro. e cerrados pinheirais seus negrejavam desde Arga até ao mar de Âncora. Mas o palácio onde Jacinto nascera, e onde sempre habitara, era em Paris, nos Campos Elísios, n.º 202.” “My friend Jacinto was born in a palace, with an anual income of one hundred and nine contos in rents from the vineyards, grain, cork trees and olive groves planted on his lands. In the Alentejo, in Estremadura and the two Beiras – Baixa and Alta – the fields oh this ancient landed family – who were already storing grain and planting vines in the days of King Dinis – were bounded by dense hedges which undulated over hill and dale, and by good high stone walls, an by streams and roads. Their estate in Tormes, in Baixo Douro, took in a whole mountain range. Rents flowed in from the estates they owned between Tua and Tinhela, an area covering five leagues, and their thick pine woods darkened the Arga hills all the way down to the sea at Âncora. However, the palace in which Jacinto was born, and where he had always lived, was in Paris, on the Champs-Elysées,