him? The line me tem ao remo atado and the fact that he wrote a long elegy (Saião d'esta alma) on the death of a friend, the young D. Tello de Meneses, killed in a brawl at Cochin in 1563, during the same expedition, make an affirmative answer highly probable. At any rate Redondo's viceroyalty seems to have been one of Camões' happier times in India. He was on familiar, if respectful, terms with the merry and witty Viceroy, to whom he addressed the redondilhas beginning Conde, cujo ilustre peito, and who sent him verses to gloss (80). It was perhaps during these years that he fell under the charms of the slave-girl Barbara, who inspired him with one of his loveliest lyrics (81), and that he invited five young fidalgos, his intimate friends, to a dinner of empty dishes, a really blank feast of blanc-mange, as the accompanying verses described it (82), soon followed, no doubt, by more substantial fare, since by the Viceroy's favour he was now probably better off, and there is no reason to think him incapable of spending what he earned. So high in favour was he with Redondo that the aged and wealthy Garcia da Orta did not disdain to ask him for an introductory ode (Aquelle unico exemplo), beseeching the Viceroy's condescension on behalf of Orta and science, to the Coloquios printed at Goa by Joannes de Emden in 1563. Camões does not elsewhere mention Orta, and Orta nowhere mentions Camões Orta was some thirty years his senior, but one would like to think that Camões was able to make use of his well-stocked library at Goa. The Conde de Redondo died at Goa on February 19, 1564, before the end of his viceroyalty. The new Viceroy, D. Antão de Noronha, arrived in September. To the gems of verse he seems to have preferred more solid jewels. If Camões held any official post under Redondo he may have lost it now, and the complete silence which surrounds the next three years of his life is in itself significant. The constant changes of those in authority were especially hard on subordinate. officials (83), and the favourite of one Viceroy could have no great hope that his successor would also be a forte escudo. It has been supposed that Camões accompanied expeditions sent out yearly from Goa during these years 1564-7, or that it was during these years that he went to the Moluccas, to Malacca, and even to Japan. He may have stayed on in India waiting for the post of factor at Chaul, to which he held the reversion (84), to become vacant, although Castello Branco contended that this post was only granted him by King Sebastian after his return to Portugal, and Storck is of the same opinion. It was easier to leave Portugal than to return. Home-bound ships were crammed with spices and other merchandise; a passage was difficult to obtain and expensive. Camões was once more penniless, but Pedro, or Pero, Barreto Rolim, who was going as captain to Sofala, offered to take him with him as far as Mozambique, and they left Goa in September 1567. Pedro Barreto, having done the poet a kind turn, has borne the consequences, for he has been denounced by most of the biographers and accused of keeping Camões under arrest at Mozambique until he paid the uttermost farthing of what, except in Mariz' imagination, he had probably never owed him (for Barreto had merely paid for Camões' daily food from Goa to Mozambique). Even in 1914 Dr. Braga declares that Barreto 'behaved infamously'. According to the Couto MS., a quarrel with Barreto arose owing to Camões' difficult temper. Passing ships brought no friends willing to pay for the poet's keep during the long homeward voyage. He supported life as best he could in this unhealthy region with the help of charitable friends, and cheered his spirits by making ready for the press his only but not unworthy treasure from India: the ten cantos of the Lusiads. Fortune was more favourable in 1569. The historian Couto and other friends going home. were delayed by bad weather at Mozambique during the |