Read "Journey to Portugal" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The traveller has already remarked how Guimarães is truly the cradle of our nation. He had learnt as much in school, heard it repeated in commemorative lectures, so had no lack of reasons for taking his first steps to the sacred site where the Cathedral stands. At one time the slopes on the way up were stripped of heavy vegetation, so the owners might find no impediment on their way out, nor their enemies any hiding place on their approach. Today it's a garden filled with neat alleys and luxuriant woods, the perfect place for new lovers to haunt. The traveller, always subject to exaggeration where historical detail is concerned, would have preferred the entire hillside to be cleared, and left as rough terrain, with only its eight-hundred-year-old stones still flourishing.
Thus preoccupied, he lost the venerable shade of Afonso Henriques, lost his way to the front door, before becoming impatient and deciding to go straight ahead, confident of being hailed by some municipal guard who would accost him with: "Gentle knight, where are you headed? " To which our first king replies: "To the castle. My horse is exhausted with going round in circles. " The gardener hasn't noticed a horse thereabouts but replies charitably: "Take him to the water, and then follow this track and you won't get lost. " And when Afonso Henriques departs, dragging his wounded leg to Badajoz, the gardener comments to his assistant: "You get all sorts around here."