g, and suddenly became aware that we
ourselves were the objects of the excitement, waving of hands,
screaming, and gesticulating. Before we had time to do more than realise
that we were being warned of some terrific danger in wait for us round
the corner of the high wall, some little distance in advance, two
_picadores_ on horseback, armed with their long pikes, galloped round
the corner, also shouting wildly to us, and pointing across the fields
as if telling us to fly, and almost at the same moment the whole drove
of bulls, tearing along at a terrific rate, without _cabestros_,
appeared, charging straight towards us. We did not need a second hint.
At one side of the road was the old wall of Madrid, at the other a high
bank with a wide ditch beyond it. Without a word, we put our horses at
the bank,--they had realised the situation as quickly as we had,--jumped
the ditch at a flying leap from the top of the bank, and were off across
a field of young wheat. Once only I looked behind, and saw a magnificent
black bull, with his tail in the air--a signal of attack--on the top of
the bank over which I had just leaped, preparing to follow me. Long
afterwards, as it seemed, when my horse slackened his pace, I found
myself alone in a wide plain, neither bulls nor fellow-rider to be seen.
His horse had bolted in another direction from mine, and we heard
afterwards that the _picadores_ had galloped in between me and the
sporting bull and turned him back. Eventually, the _cabestros_ appeared
on the scene, and the poor misguided bulls were inveigled into the
shambles for the _fiesta_ of the morrow. How they had ever managed to
break away or gain the public road at all, we were never able to learn.

CHAPTER VI

THE COURT

During the reign of Don Alfonso XII., except during the interval when
the melancholy death of his first beloved Queen, Mercedes, plunged King,
Court, and people into mourning, Madrid was gayer than perhaps it has
ever been. No one loved amusement better than the young King, who was
only seventeen when the military _pronunciamiento_ of Martinez Campo
called him to the throne from which his mother had been driven seven
years previously. He had taken his people, and indeed all the world, by
storm, for from the first moment he had shown all the qualities which
make a ruler popular, and Spain has never had a young monarch of so much
promise. He had the royal gift of memory, and an extraordinary facility
in sp