became the great liberator, King
Joao I., but after Dona Costanca's death it was soon seen that he loved
Dona Inez more than any one had imagined, and he was believed even to
have married her. This, and his refusal to accept any of the royal
princesses chosen by his father, so enraged Dom Affonso that he
determined to have Dona Inez killed, and this was done by three knights
on 7th January 1355 in the Quinta das Lagrimas--that is, the Garden of
Tears--near Coimbra. Dom Pedro, who was away hunting in the south, would
have rebelled against his father, but was persuaded by the queen to
submit after he had devastated all the province of Minho. Two years
later Dom Affonso died, and after Dom Pedro had caught and tortured to
death two of the murderers--the third escaped to Castile--he in 1361 had
Dona Inez's body removed from its grave, dressed in the royal robes and
crowned, and swearing that he had really married her, he compelled all
the court to pay her homage and to kiss her hand: then the body was
placed on a bier and carried by night to the place prepared for it at
Alcobaca, some seventy miles away. When six years later, in 1367, he
came to die himself he left directions that they should be buried with
their feet towards one another, that at the resurrection the first thing
he should see should be Dona Inez rising from her tomb. Unfortunately
the French soldiers in 1810 broke open both tombs, smashing away much
fine carved work and scattering their bones.[73] The two tombs are much
alike in design and differ only in detail; both rest on four lions; the
sides, above a narrow border of sunk quatrefoils, are divided by tiny
buttresses rising from behind the gables of small niches into six parts,
each of which has an arch under a gable whose tympanum is filled with
the most minute tracery. Each of these arches is cusped and foliated
differently according to the nature of the figure subject it contains.
Behind the tops of the gables and pinnacles of the buttresses runs a
small arcade with beautiful little figures only a few inches high: above
this a still more delicate arcade runs round the whole tomb, interrupted
at regular intervals by shields, charged on Dom Pedro's tomb with the
arms of Portugal and on that of Dona Inez with the same and with those
of the Castros alternately. At the foot of Dom Pedro's is represented
the Crucifixion, and facing it on that of Dona Inez the Last Judgment.
Nothing can exceed the delicacy an