able to fill it with their reclamations. Savary eagerly
offered to accompany him on this fatal journey, which began on the 10th
of April. The infatuated Ferdinand had been taught to believe that he
should find Buonaparte at Burgos; not meeting him there, he was tempted
to pursue his journey as far as Vittoria: and from thence, in spite of
the populace, who, more sagacious than their prince, cut the traces of
his carriage, he was, by a repetition of the same treacherous arguments,
induced to proceed stage by stage, and at length to pass the frontier
and present himself at Bayonne, where the arbiter of his fate lay
anxiously expecting this consummation of his almost incredible folly. He
arrived there on the 20th of April--was received by Napoleon with
courtesy, entertained at dinner at the imperial table, and the same
evening informed by Savary that his doom was sealed--that the Bourbon
dynasty had ceased to reign in Spain, and that his personal safety must
depend on the readiness with which he should resign all his pretensions
into the hands of Buonaparte.

He, meanwhile, as soon as he was aware that Ferdinand had actually set
out from Madrid, had ordered Murat to find the means of causing the old
King, the Queen, and Godoy to repair also to Bayonne; nor does it appear
that his lieutenant had any difficulty in persuading these personages
that such was the course of conduct most in accordance with their
interests. They reached Bayonne on the 4th of May, and Napoleon,
confronting the parents and the son on the 5th, witnessed a scene in
which the profligate rancour of their domestic feuds reached extremities
hardly to have been contemplated by the wildest imagination. The
flagitious Queen did not, it is said and believed, hesitate to signify
to her son that the King was not his father--and this in the presence of
that King and of Napoleon. Could crime justify crime--could the fiendish
lusts and hatreds of a degenerate race offer any excuse for the
deliberate guilt of a masculine genius, the conduct of this abject court
might have apologised for the policy which it perhaps tempted the
pampered ambition of Napoleon to commence, and which it now encouraged
him to consummate by an act of suicidal violence.

Charles IV. resigned the Crown of Spain for himself and his heirs,
accepting in return from the hands of Napoleon a safe retreat in Italy
and a large pension. Godoy, who had entered into the fatal negotiation
of Fontainebl