the great park-gates stood hospitably open, and the little
town of San Ildefonso, with its lodgings and hostels, was at this season
crowded with courtiers and hangers-on of the court. Guards circulated
here and there, or clattered after the Queen-Regent as she drove out on
the magnificent King's highway which stretched upwards over the
Guadarrama towards Madrid, or whirled down towards Segovia and the
plains of Old Castile. Bugles were never long silent in _plaza_ or
barrack yard. Drums beat, fifes shrilled, and there was a continuous
trampling of horses as this ambassador or that was escorted to the
presence of Queen Cristina, widow of Fernando VII., mother of Isabel the
Second, and Regent of Spain.

A word of historical introduction is here necessary, and it shall be but
a word. For nearly a quarter of a century Fernando, since he had been
restored to a forfeited throne by British bayonets, had acted on the
ancient Bourbon principle of learning nothing and forgetting nothing.
His tyrannies became ever more tyrannical, his exactions more shameless,
his indolent arrogance more oppressive. Twice he had to invoke the aid
of foreign troops, and once indeed a French army marched from one end of
Spain to the other.

But with the coming of his third wife, young Maria Cristina of Naples,
all this was changed. Under her influence Fernando promptly became meek
and uxorious. Then he revoked the ordinance of a former King which
ordained that no woman should reign in Spain. He recalled his
revocation, and again promulgated it according as his hope of offspring
waxed or waned.

Finally a daughter was born to the ill-mated pair, and Don Carlos, the
King's brother and former heir-apparent, left the country. Immediately
upon the King's death civil war divided the state. The stricter
legitimists who stood for Don Carlos included the church generally and
the religious orders. To these were joined the northern parts of Navarra
and the Basque countries whose privileges had been threatened, together
with large districts of the ever-turbulent provinces of Aragon and
Catalunia.

Round the Queen-Regent and her little daughter collected all the liberal
opinion of the peninsula, most of the foreign sympathy, the influence of
the great towns and sea-ports, of the capital and the government
officials, the regular army and police with their officers--indeed all
the organised and stated machinery of government.

But up to the time of our hist