Sun and Shadow in Spain

Just then a telegram was brought in by Pepé, the cherubic office boy. The Consul sighed again as he read it aloud:

“Friends of yours?” asked Patsy.

“Never heard of them.”

“Wife and daughter of Congressman?”

“Emerald Green, it’s not a name I know.”

“Do you get many such letters?”

“Tons of them; it’s all in the day’s work.”

The ring in his voice was characteristic of the time. Nobody minded the extra trouble they were put to, everybody gladly lent a hand to help those two young people get married. If a household is turned topsy turvy when a daughter is married, it is not strange that a city should be turned upside down and inside out when a King is wed. Mr. Collier, the American Minister, must have been as much pestered as the Consul; he always had time for us though, and we brought away pleasant memories of him and of the Legation where we were hospitably entertained.

Of all our friends, the Argentino alone held aloof from the joyous bustle; a week before the wedding he left Madrid.

“I’m off for Barcelona till all this pother’s over,” he said. “Come with me. What interest have we republicans in royal marriages?”

“The interest of seeing what we cannot see at home.”

“Ah! that’s the difference between your republic and mine; we do not forget, be sure that you do not.”

“Don’t be cryptic,” said Patsy, “I never knew what a good republican I was till I came to Spain.”

“Though Spain is one kingdom, the more free people in the world is the Spaniard,” Don Jaime protested. “If he have a little money he do what he like. United States is one republic; there no man can do what he like.”

“He can think as he likes,” retorted the Argentino, then persuasively to Patsy, “you’ve seen enough of old Spain and its pageants. Come with me to Barcelona, have a look at new Spain. There’s a great fight on there, that really is the most important thing that is happening in Spain.”

“What sort of a fight?”

“The eternal fight between Yesterday and To-morrow, between new ideas and old. The liberals are making a brave stand. They are trying to get control of the vast sums of money now expended by the Church, which they wish to use for the public schools. There are not half enough schools to go round even in Catalonia, the brains, the nerve center, the place that does the thinking for Spain. Only thirty per cent of the people can read and write; that’s not enough.”

“Too much monks, nuns and priests expulsed from France,” sighed Don Jaime; “enough came before from Cuba and Porto Rico. The priest he know what happen in every man’s house before the husband.”

“Which is worse?” asked Patsy, “the rule of the priest, the soldier, or the shopkeeper?”

“We have not time to argue that question to-day,” laughed the Argentino, “for the last time will you come to Barcelona?”

“No,” said Patsy, “I can see enough of the sort of fight you speak of at home. I may never have another chance to see a king married.”

XV

THE KING’S WEDDING

“So did a few hundred other people! They have been worrying and harrying him for a month. No one is allowed inside the Prado to-day, not even the head porter.”

“I think Don José might make an exception for his family and—for us.”

“Not even for himself. He is responsible for the safety of the pictures. Do you realize what that means?”

Villegas is responsible for one of the world’s greatest treasures, and is uneasy about the safety of the building that contains it. No wonder Lucia complains her husband does not sleep as well as he once did.

We waited for the procession in the dining-room of the Paris, a comfortable low-ceiled room with a suggestion of a ship’s dining cabin about it. A table had been engaged for us in the window. The last guest to arrive was Don Jaime, who strolled in leisurely after the streets had been closed to other people for two hours. The Don had on a new coat, a white waistcoat and a gardenia in his buttonhole; it was pleasant to see him dressed for once as he deserved.

“I passed the nuncio of the holy Pap driving to the church,” he said. “They will not tardy greatly now.”

A few minutes later the first of the fifty gala wedding coaches came in sight. Though of varying degrees of splendor they were all on the same general plan of those we had seen when Sir Maurice de Bunsen presented his credentials. That day one Ambassador and his suite had been escorted in state to the palace; to-day the whole court and all the wedding guests must be transported from the palace to the church. Could the wonderful carriages, the proud horses, the ostrich plumes, the trappings, wigs, galloons and silk stockings hold out?

They did; they grew finer and finer. One coach was of tortoise shell, one blue and silver, one purple and gold lacquer. All the shining company of princes, grandees, ambassadors extraordinary, court ladies, maids of honor, was magnificently conveyed in gala coaches drawn by noble horses with nodding feathered head-dresses, all attended by grooms in satin liveries. It was a torrent of dazzling splendor that wearied the eyes and stunned the imagination.

“I have been forty years in diplomacy,” said a dapper old gentleman with a single eyeglass, who sat at the next table; “I have seen most of the royal marriages of my time; I never saw anything to compare to this.”

The bride rode with her mother in the tortoise-shell coach; they were talking together as they passed. Princess Beatrice looked pale and grave, the bride happy, expectant, calm, as every bride should look. In the last coach, a marvel of crystal and gold, rode the King behind eight proud cream-colored horses. They ambled daintily along, tossing and tossing their heads so the long ostrich plumes nodded in time to their high stepping. Where, when, had we seen horses like these before? While we waited for the wedding party to come back from church, I remembered.

It was in Scotland just ten years ago this August, the season when Ben Marone puts on his imperial purple veil of heather, that we stood together outside the inn at Braemar waiting to see the royal carriage from Balmoral pass. Soon four, perfectly matched, cream-colored ponies—very like the King of Spain’s horses—came racing in sight at the top of their speed, drawing a large, plain, old-fashioned carriage. On the box sat a Highlander in tartan and filibegs.

“’Twull be the Queen and Princess Beatrice,” said one of the villagers.

The carriage came within our line of vision. “Ay, ’tis her Majesty.”

On the back seat sat an old woman in a shabby black cloak and bonnet, a younger lady in black beside her. The Queen was old and very tired of state and ceremony; she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but straight before her, as the villagers pulled forelock or curtsied. She seemed to be thinking deeply, was perhaps looking into the future. If she could have foreseen that her little granddaughter—the one for whose future she might have felt the most concern—would assume the name she had made illustrious, would she have been pleased?

“They will be coming back from church in a moment.” Patsy, whom we had not seen that morning, brought the news. “I saw them go into San Jeronimo’s. The bride wore a white dress like others I have seen, only longer; her veil was lace—not that flimsy stuff; it did not cover her face.” He was proud of having observed, and remembered so much.

Soon after we heard the joyous marriage music, and the long, glittering procession began to pass again, much in the same manner as before, only the Queen sat beside the King in the crystal and gold coach with the big crown on the top. As they passed through the Puerta del Sol they bowed and smiled to the people; their happy young faces were flushed with heat and excitement. When the coach had disappeared down the Calle Mayor I confessed my plan to the company.

“I am going to leave you, to slip round by the back streets to the Youngs’ house, opposite the palace. From their windows I can see the procession turn from the Calle Mayor into the palace yard and drive up to the door.”

“Do not let her go,” I heard Don Jaime say emphatically in Spanish; he added something that I did not hear.

“It will be very hot,” said Lucia.

“Ninety in the shade,” Patsy agreed. “One of us will have to go with you.”

“Luncheon is ready,” said our hostess.

“Iced melon in the hand is worth a good deal in the bush,” said J., “but of course I will take you if you really want to go.”

“It’s pretty jolly here,” murmured Patsy.

“Champagne?” whispered the waiter.

“Take at least a biscuit, and you must drink the bride’s health before you go,” said the prince of hosts.

It seemed too bad to break up the party. They were evidently serious about not letting me go alone. I yielded and stayed.

The restaurant was filling up with men in uniform and ladies in court dress who had come from the wedding; most of the people staying at the hotel were of the diplomatic world. At a table near us sat Mrs. Cartwright, looking as handsome in her white court dress as when Villegas painted her when she was a bride. At another table the King’s former tutor, Señor Merry del Val, a handsome, distinguished man (brother of the Cardinal), and his charming wife. It certainly was very jolly in that pleasant company, talking over the dresses, the coaches and the coming fêtes.

If I had not stayed at the Hotel Paris, if I had gone to the Calle Mayor, I should have seen the gay procession of coaches, with the attendant postilions and palfreniers walking on either side, turn into the palace yard one by one, till there was only left in the Calle Mayor for the crowd to gape at the coche de respecto and the King’s coach. Then suddenly out of the heavens fall what at first looked like a great bouquet, not unlike those that had been showered down from window and balcony all along the route; then a blinding flash, a dreadful crash, a cloud of smoke; and when that cleared away the crystal coach shattered, the brave horses staggering on a pace or two, the King looking from the wrecked coach and crying:

“It is nothing; we are neither of us hurt.”

“Nothing?” But that is what King Umberto said, when he fell mortally stabbed at Monza.

The wheel horses reeled and fell, done to death, their shining sides, their white plumes all dabbled with blood. The King jumped out—his coat torn from his back—and helped out the bride. They were neither of them hurt, as he had said. The Queen was pale but wonderfully calm and brave,—till she looked down and saw the hem of her wedding dress covered with blood! Then through the distracted crowd, a small phalanx of resolute men pushed their way to the front, tall men in uniform, who surrounded the Queen, walked with her through the awful carnage down the Calle Mayor, across the palace yard to the door of her new home.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Some said they were the staff of the British Embassy, who had seen the accident from the Youngs’ windows; some that they were six tall life-guardsmen, who had played some part in the pageant. The important thing is, they were Englishmen; they and Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the English Ambassador, appeared, as if by magic, at the moment they were wanted.

No whisper of the tragedy reached the Paris. In the restaurant the gaily dressed people lingered at the tables, toasting the bride. Our party was one of the first to break up. A friend drove me to the Consulate, where finding the Consul had not returned, I waited to see him. He came in shortly, white as a ghost, and cried out for a glass of water. From Mr. Summers I heard the first account of the horror. He had seen the bodies of the innocent people killed by the bomb carried by. He had counted eight soldiers, seventeen civilians, all strangers to him. One he had known by sight, a little girl, the five-year-old daughter of a great house. He had seen her a few minutes before standing on a neighboring balcony with her parents. “Such a little body,” he said; “where the face had been, there was a twist of child’s curls, nothing more; the face was gone.”

What awful sights I had been spared! I carried the news home to the Tower. Villegas had not yet come back, the others had heard nothing.

Lucia clapped her hands to her heart when she heard of the outrage. “God grant,” she said with white lips, “that it was not an Italian who threw the bomb.” She is a Roman; her first fear, her first hope were for Italy.

“What was that thing Don Jaime said to you at the Paris, when I proposed going to the Youngs’ house?” I asked Patsy.

He said “Do not let her go; the police fear that a bomb will be thrown in the Calle Mayor.”

If the police knew so much, why could they not have averted the horror?

This was never explained.

XVI

WEDDING GUESTS

It was the morning after the wedding; considering the hour—it was still early—there were a great many people sitting in the chairs or pacing slowly under the trees of the Recoletos. All Madrid was drawing its breath, trying to steady its nerve by a little air and exercise. Without warning, without escort, the King and Queen whirled by in an open automobile. The bride and groom had slipped out of the palace and had been driven to the hospital to see the eighty people who were wounded by the bomb that had been meant to kill them. They had flashed through the Puerta del Sol, through the most crowded quarter of the city, and were now returning to the palace, attended only by a chauffeur.

“Bravo va!” cried the seller of orgeat from his booth; then, yielding to enthusiasm, he vaulted over the counter, left the till unprotected, and joined in the chase.

“Viva, viva!” The crowd in the Recoletos lost its head; women waved parasols, men hats or handkerchiefs. The applause was fine, spontaneous, electrical.

“They’re game!” cried Patsy. “He’s a man, and I guess she’s a good deal of a woman.”

They looked so brave, the blonde bride so grave, so loyal, so fresh, that we were all moved; there was heart in the cries of viva, bueno, bravo, that followed them, applause of a very different calibre from the rather perfunctory toasting and hurrahing of yesterday.

There was but one dissentient voice. I heard the old gentleman who had been forty years in diplomacy say: “It is against all precedent! Without even an escort! It will be much criticised.”

It may have been criticised at Court; the people liked it. Don Alfonzo is wise enough to know that the applause of the gallery is more important to the actor than the appreciation of the stalls.

The wedding fêtes lasted a week. The gala performance at the opera, the bull-fight, the battle of flowers, the balloon race, the ball at the palace and all the more private festivities such as dinners and luncheons, had been carefully planned, so that no hour should hang heavy on the wedding guests. Time had to be made for one more function, the funeral of the officers and soldiers killed by the bomb. It took place the very day after the disaster. I did not see that black pageant of death, I wish I had; but J. saw and told me about it.

At very nearly the same hour as that gorgeous marriage procession, there passed over the same ground, through the Puerta del Sol and down the Alcalá, a long string of black hearses. The first two, the coaches of honor, were splendid with sable trappings; on the top lay the arms of the dead officers. The King, the Prince of Wales, and most of the other royalties walked in the procession that followed.

In spite of the gloom cast by the dreadful disaster, the fêtes went on with slight modifications, as if nothing had happened. The ball at the palace was changed into a reception. Dancing when so many mourned their dead was out of the question. It was decided that the King and Queen must not appear at the battle of flowers. It was too dangerous; the deadly bouquet that masqued the bomb held a warning.

For perhaps a day there was a panicky feeling. The crowd was nervous, keyed up; it would take nothing to make a stampede. I was never allowed to go out alone lest “something should happen.” Very soon, however, Madrid recovered its tone. Crowds of orderly, well-dressed people thronged the streets day and night, admiring the magnificent illuminations, the splendid decorations. Where other cities use bunting and cotton cloth, Madrid used satin, silk, damask, brocade. The fronts of the houses were brave with rich embroideries and priceless tapestries. The famous ruby velvet hangings covered the façade of the Duke Cestus’ palace, the pattern of the silver blazonry outlined at night with electric light. During the whole week those priceless treasures hung exposed to the burning sun, or to the chance of rain, which fortunately never came.

Villegas was busier than ever, devising schemes for decoration, giving advice about a costume, receiving a distinguished visitor. He was continually summoned to the Prado to show the pictures to one or other of the wedding guests. Some days he hardly did more than look into the studio, where Cisera always had his brushes ready, and Angoscia, the model, waited, sometimes all day, to pose for one little half hour.

One morning we met the Maestro on the stairs—J. had the studio next door to his. “Just in time!” cried Villegas. “I was afraid I should not get you. They have telephoned from the palace that

we must meet the Prince and Princess of Wales at the museum. They haven’t given me time enough even to go home and put on a black coat.”

Villegas had on his funny little blue studio jacket, buttoned up to the neck, a jacket not quite like any other; he designed it for himself when he was a student. I never saw him in any other coat, except when on Court duty.

It was so late that Villegas and J. jumped into a cab; Patsy and I followed them on foot.

“We are in time,” said Patsy, as we drew near the Prado; “there are the red legs.”

Each of the King’s guests was provided with two carriages, a court carriage and a state-department carriage. The every-day carriages, in which they drove about in the morning and did their shopping or sight-seeing, were handsome but simple landaus with the royal coat-of-arms on the panels. The main distinction was the red stockings and blue velvet breeches of the servants. Patsy always kept a sharp lookout for the red legs.

There were more people than usual going into the museum, most of them country folk come to Madrid for the fêtes. Patsy and I stood in the crowd and watched the Prince and Princess get out of the carriage with Mr. Keppel, the equerry. Villegas met the Prince at the door and asked leave to present his English pupil (J.). Then they all disappeared together into the Prado, Villegas leading the way with the Princess. She is tall, slender, with pretty yellow hair and an air of great distinction; there is a strong family resemblance between her and the young Queen.

Villegas said that the Princess, like most of the royalties he escorts over the museum, was greatly interested in the royal portraits. When the pictures are artistically important like the Velasquez, the Moros, even the Goyas, he is able to tell all about the originals; but when they are of mediocre value, by unimportant painters, poor Villegas is harrassed with fear lest he may not always give the right name, date and title.

The Prince admired immensely, and seemed to enter into the spirit of the Velasquez “Siege of Breda.” When the magnanimous attitude of the conqueror was pointed out—he cannot take the keys of the city because both hands are occupied, the Prince said:

“That was so nice of him!”

He paused a long time before Paul Veronese’s picture of the Marriage of Cana. On the table before the Saviour is a dish of meat that, the Prince pointed out, resembled a roast sucking pig. “But,” he said, “they were all Jews; they would never have eaten pork!”

J. said this showed that the Prince really looked

at the pictures and thought about them; many of the people he has helped Villegas take through the museum walk through as if it were a duty to be got over as soon as possible. The Prince asked how much various of the pictures were worth. He studied carefully St. Paul and St. Gerome in the desert, by Velasquez (the dear one with the ravens flying to the hermitage carrying loaves of bread in their beaks to feed the unthrifty old saints).

“How much is that picture worth?” he asked. “Almost anything, isn’t it?”

Villegas says royalties never know what things cost. They may have a sense of the value of money, but no sense of the value of things.

The Prince lingered longest in the portrait room. Well he might—it contains some of the consummate portraits of the world!

“That is very fine,” said the Prince, pointing to Van Dyke’s portrait of himself with his patron the Earl of Bristol; “and that Cardinal of Pavia by Raphael, and this Holbein. Yet one hears more about John Sargent’s portraits. I don’t think them as good as these, do you?”

It was very hot in the Ribera room, where they had lagged a little behind the others. J. took off his hat to mop his brow, and for the sake of being cooler did not put it on again.

“Keep on your hat,” said the Prince. Supposing this was merely politeness J. forgot all about it, and a few minutes after did the same thing again.

“Please put on your hat,” said Mr. Keppel; “we don’t want to attract attention to the party.”

“Yes, yes,” laughed the Prince lightly, “we don’t want to attract attention!”

That, then, was the reason such short notice of the visit had been given—they did not wish to attract attention! The only person who showed the least nervousness was the detective from Scotland Yard, who followed with the Chief of the Madrid police. The detective, J. said, “was in a blue funk; he seemed to see a nihilist in everybody who came within bomb-shot of the Prince.” While they were lingering in the Ribera room, the detective begged Mr. Keppel that the Prince should keep up with the Princess and Villegas; “they must all keep together; it was too dangerous, too difficult for the chief of police to watch them if they scattered.”

We heard that the English police had informed the Spanish before the outrage that a man had been observed practising throwing various articles from a balcony, as if gauging the distance to the street.

The shadow of fear darkened every sunny hour of these festival days. It was with us when we started at eight o’clock one golden June morning to drive to the review, held on the Castilian plain eight miles from Madrid. We had tickets for the grand stand of the Senate. We were a little late; by the time we arrived the seats were all taken. We were turning sadly away when Patsy espied Don Luis.

“Here is the Key!” he cried. “He will get us in somewhere.” Don Luis was called the Key because he contrived to open every door to us. How did he manage it? It was not with a silver key; Don Luis was very poor. He had an uncle who stood high in office; he was never caught without the uncle’s card, the open sesame of many doors. This time it opened the military tribune, where we found admirable places. This tribune was less crowded than the others; most of the military were busy with the manœuvres. It was a morning of extraordinary emotions; there was a thrill of controlled excitement in the air; every face wore a smile, every heart held a fear. The royalties were all present; the young Queen, looking fresh and rosy, drove by with her mother-in-law. Don Alfonzo, in the uniform of an officer of halberdiers, rode at the wheel of her carriage. All through the fêtes the young lovers were the centre of interest; we saw them so often that we grew to feel quite intimate with them.

All the ambassadors extraordinary were there, and all the royalties. We saw the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince of Sweden, the Russian Grand Duke Vladimir, the Duke of Genoa, Prince Albert of Prussia, and Prince Louis Philippe, the young Crown Prince of Portugal; a lovely looking lad, about whose future consort, young as he was, the court gossips were already busy.[4]

We trembled for these great people, come together from every part of the world to take part in the wedding celebration; our hearts were full of fear and pity for them.

“It seems,” said Patsy, “as if the Reign of Terror had returned, only instead of being in France alone it is over the whole world. A list has been found of Anarchy’s next victims, headed by——” he whispered three great names.

Meanwhile the infantry regiments, the backbone of the army, were marching by. The men were well dressed, well looking, full of dash and vigor; they marched worse than any troops I ever saw.

“When it comes to the drill, the steady hammer, hammer, hammer, of the drill sergeant, they haven’t it in them,” said Patsy. “They may get it, they haven’t it now.”

The music was very bad; the military bands lacked the same thing that the soldiers lacked,—training, the stiff, hard, daily grind, the thing that makes the difference between every man and his brother, between every nation and her sister. What remains, if marching and music are bad? The glory and insolence of youth in those squadrons of cavalry and artillery dashing by. The vast arid plain soon became like a battlefield as soldiers describe it and as painters of battles try to paint it. The bands of cavalry began to pass slowly, the officers in advance, picked men, with picked horses, as gallant a troop as I ever saw. The officers rode with the naked sword raised as if for a charge. Just after they passed our stand, the pace quickened from a trot to a canter, to a mad gallop, as each troop swung short round an imaginary curve and disappeared in a cloud of dust. The dust they raised gave the effect of dust and smoke combined. A real battle-field must look like a thing seen on the stage with transparencies of dust and smoke. Through the veil of gray haze, we caught glimpses of distant squadrons marching and countermarching, pack mules with mountain batteries, engineers with field telegraph apparatus and pontoon bridges, long boats made very squat and solid so they will not easily capsize, and longer planks to lay upon the boats.

“They can bridge a river in fifteen minutes,” said Don Luis.

“The Guadalquiver or the Manzanares, perhaps,” murmured Patsy, “hardly the Amazon or the Mississippi. These pontoons are metal, the latest thing. Ours are of wood; we shall soon have them of metal like these Spanish ones.”

“Who told you so much?” I asked.

“I heard Lieutenant Grant say so,” said Patsy. “Didn’t you see him drive by with our Ambassador? I should like to ask him if this looks to him as it does to me, like a miniature Gettysburg.”

We were thankful when the review was safely over and everybody gone home safe and sound. It seemed to us the most dangerous of all the fêtes. The distance covered was so great that to protect all these royal people must have been well-nigh impossible.

“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place,” said Patsy. “The only thing to do is to assume that there is no danger.”

The most original of all the fêtes was the balloon race. Engracia sent us invitations to the Park of the Society of Aeronauts to see the start. We found all Madrid in the large enclosure; what was more important, we found Engracia in the midst of that crowd of smartly dressed people.

“The race,” Engracia told us, “has been arranged as a compliment to the Queen. She and the King will see it from their windows. All the balloons will pass over the palace.”

“Wind and weather permitting,” laughed Patsy. “Isn’t this the latest word in the way of Sport? I never heard of such a thing in New York or Paris.”

“Claro!” the Madrileña flashed out at him. “You think Spain is behind the rest of the world, yet you must come to Madrid to see a balloon race.”

The centres of attraction were the thirteen balloons entered for the race. Each monster air ball swaying in the stay ropes was surrounded by a group of people. Engracia led the way to one where the crowd was thickest.

“It is a good thing to have a friend in every place, even in the inferno,” she said. “I have a friend who is going up in that balloon. It must be terrible to go alone!”

Way was made for Engracia; Patsy and I followed, and took a good look at the balloon at close quarters. It was shaped like a globe with a stovepipe coming out of the bottom. The basket car was small and high, coming up to the armpits of Engracia’s friend, a man of average size. The color of the balloon was like a modern warship’s neutral gray, the tint most easily confounded with cloud or smoke. Patsy peeped inside the basket, hoping to see some interesting apparatus for steering or at least guiding the flight.

“Nothing inside,” he reported, “except a few bags of sand just like those:” he pointed to the sand bags hanging from the outer edge of the basket. “That,” he showed a small instrument shaped like a pedometer hanging in the shrouds, “is to measure the distance, and that to gauge the velocity of the wind.”

“What, nothing more? No modern contrivance to help them navigate the air?”

“Nothing but sand,” said Patsy. “It takes a lot of two kinds of sand.”

It was such a breathless afternoon: it seemed as if there could not be wind enough to lift the great captive swaying awkwardly in its ropes. The breeze must have come up without our noticing it, for there was a sudden commotion in the crowd, and we were all ordered to stand back. Engracia waved a last adieu to her friend.

“Abour!” she cried, as the balloon shot up to a great height. “If he had only taken some one with him!” There was something terrible in the loneliness of that solitary figure in the balloon.

In a few seconds another balloon shot up; it was perhaps lighter than the first, for it seemed to overtake it immediately. The two great balloons drifted nearer and nearer to each other; when just above our heads they noiselessly collided.

“Por Dios!” cried Engracia, and hid her face.

There was a slight depression in each balloon, then they sprang apart, like two vast rubber balls, and sailed off, each in a slightly different direction, neither the worse for the collision.

Taking advantage of the light breeze, the remaining eleven balloons were loosed and shot up to a great height. Soon the whole fleet looked no larger than so many toy balloons. We watched them sail away over the palace of the King, where the young Queen was watching for them, forgetting perhaps for a moment her terror, as the balloons sailed over the palace, over the bare plains of Castile, towards the Guadarramas, and the grim Escorial, her last home.

In the Park of the Society of Aeronauts, there was a deal of jesting, as the toy balloons sent off by Engracia and a dozen other ladies, followed the real ones.

“They all behaved,” said Patsy, as we drove home after the race, “as if there were no such things as bombs; courage, it seems, is still an aristocratic virtue.”

The night of the reception at the palace was very dark. The sky looked like black velvet; the streets blazed with clusters, chains, pyramids of light. The Puerta del Sol was a sea of sparkling flames, that shone on triumphal arches, flags, flowers, and the entwined letters A and V.

The servants at the palace recognized Villegas. They did not even look at our invitation, but motioned us to pass with him through that door we knew so well from the outside. We found ourselves in a big shining hall at the foot of the escalara principal, a magnificent double staircase, guarded by fierce marble lions and fiercer halberdiers standing on each step, their halberds touching, making a line of flashing steel on either side, just as the Argentino described—a sight “well worth seeing indeed!” We lingered at the foot of the stair to watch some of the people pass up.

“Who is that?” I asked, as a lady of superb bearing walked slowly up the stair. “I think she is the most distinguished looking woman I have seen in Spain.”

“That is the Duquesa San Carlos,” said Engracia, who had just come in.

“And who is that?” A beautiful Saxon woman in white satin and rubies was passing.

“That is one of the English party, Lady Castlereagh.”

As each Grandee or Ambassador passed, the halberdiers saluted by striking the marble stair with their halberds. It had a fine effect, like a peal of thunder or a salvo of artillery. When we had seen a few of the King’s guests go up, we followed after them.

Bang, bang! the halberds came down again in another salute. I looked behind to see who was coming. Nobody, we were the only people on the stair.

“Can that be for you?” I cried.

“Oh, no!” laughed Villegas. “For this,” touching the decoration he wore, “or possibly for the Director of the Prado.”

We entered a room paved with marble, ceiled with porcelain, hung with ivory satin embroidered in gold. It was filled comfortably, not crowded. Many of the uniforms were very handsome; some of the ladies were sumptuously dressed, with beautiful jewels, others wore very simple evening gowns. In Spain you cannot judge people by what they wear; they dare to be poor here as nowhere else. The King and Queen were receiving the Ambassadors in the Salon de Embajadores. This we could not see at the time. Later in the evening we went in and admired the superb throne with its four steps guarded by big gilt lions, the rock crystal and silver chandeliers, the painted ceiling by Tiepolo, representing the “Majesty of Spain.” Standing under this picture, the King said to one of the Ambassadors:

“Well, here I am, you see. I came very near not being with you to-night!”

A little later the King and Queen made the tour of the apartments leading from the throne rooms. The crowd here was so great that we could see nothing but two lines of people bowing and curtseying as the royal cortége passed down the middle.

“Come,” said Villegas, “you can see nothing here.” He led us through hall after hall. I caught glimpses of a marble room and a porcelain room, of cabinets filled with precious pictures, sculpture and bric-a-brac. We halted in a perfectly empty gallery hung with the most astonishing tapestries.

“Flemish,” said Villegas, “but unlike any others ever made in Flanders. Miré, they are worked with silver and gold thread.”

While we were looking at the wonderful tapestries, and puzzling out the subjects, Isabel and Larz Anderson came into the room. We were all studying the tapestry representing the “Conquest of Tunis” when we heard voices, and suddenly, without a moment’s warning, the royal party entered the gallery. The King and Queen walked first. Don Alfonzo wore a white broadcloth uniform. The Queen looked charming; there was no trace of what she had endured in her radiant complexion or her calm blue eyes. She wore white satin brocaded with little pink and blue velvet flowers, and on her head the new diamond crown made especially for her, Engracia had told us about. It was small, of the real classic shape, like the crown of the queen in Walter Crane’s picture book.

The King and Queen both bowed and smiled to the Andersons and ourselves. Then Don Alfonzo, recognizing the Maestro, waved his hand and cried out in a cheery genial voice:

“Ai Villegas, com’ esta V.?”

Queen Maria Cristina, who was walking next, stopped, called Villegas, and gave him her hand. The Infanta Isabel, the Infanta Eulalia, and the Infanta Maria Teresa, all stopped and spoke to him. The tall Swedish Crown Prince followed suit, and the Russian Grand Duke Vladimir, who seemed overjoyed at seeing him, patted him on the shoulder.

When the royal cortége swept out of the room, I was breathless with surprise and excitement.

“They all seem to know you,” I cried. “What is the bond between you and the Russian Grand Duke?”

“Quien sabé?” said Villegas. “He has been at my studio; and the Czar once bought a picture of mine.”

That reminded me of the portrait of the King. I persuaded Villegas to take me to the room where it hangs—and holds its own—among the other royal portraits.

XVII

HASTA OTRA VISTA

“I have noticed,” said the Argentino, who came in at that moment with Patsy, “that only working people know how to play. That’s the reason artists play so much better than the rest of us.”

“What did you see in Barcelona that made up for missing the fêtes?” I asked the Argentino.

“A woman clerk who sold me a railroad ticket. A butcher’s shop where the meat was cut up and sold by women,” he answered.

There were cries of protest from all the party. “That’s going a little too far if you will,” the Argentino acknowledged; “but it’s a sign of progress—things will adjust themselves. I saw the cathedral too; that’s a joy forever. I hardly knew the old city—expensive buildings are springing up everywhere in the art nouveau style, pandemonium in stone, an echo of the ‘greenery-yallery Grosvenor Gallery’ nonsense, the tag end of the ‘æsthetic’ movement. Big granite buildings with window frames, whole façades even, carved into flowers. Lilies, poppies, what you like. No more idea of architecture, of style, of subordinating parts to the whole, than—than——”

“That comes of progressive republican ideas,” growled Don Luis; for once our cheerful Valencian was out of sorts.

“You have no sympathy with them?” I asked.

“Frankly, I have never had time to occupy myself with such matters,” Don Luis confessed. “I don’t know if a Republic is good for the arts or not. The Republicans I know are all barbarians. They come to the Prado; I hear them say to the guides,