King's Revoke

Front matter

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Prologue

In the year of grace 1808 the People of Spain swept from the throne the Italian Queen Maria Luisa, her lover Manual Oodoy — who ruled from the steps of it — and the half-imbecile King, Carlos lY. This in an access of passion, but not of the sansculotte, red-capped sort, for Our Lady of Liberty was as little loved in Spain as any other foreigner. Some have sought the cause of their fury in their outraged moral sense. Even the decadent nobility, as travellers saw them and as Qoya painted them, hardly offered so strange a spectacle as the group on and about the throne— a King obsequious and faithful as a dog to his Queen's lover, the lover between two wives, and one of them the niece of the Queen. Others have accused the corruption of Oodoy's Government, which was corrupt, yet hardly more so than Spanish Governments before and after. These thmgs laid the mine, but the train which fired it was laid and lighted from France.

For the independence of proud Spain was visibly menaced from without ; sapped here by a piece of treachery, breached there by a bit of bullying, the soldiers of the Grand Army swaggering as conquerors where they had been admitted aa allies. All this, the People thought, because Godoy, the upstart prince, was frightened of the IVench, or because he had been bribed by the promise of a real principality carved out of the filched Peninsula. The People thought that an Infant of

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Spain, a trae son of the Catholic sovereigns, would never be frightened by foreign soldiers, wonld never crouch before a foreign usurper ; above all, would never humiliate and betray his country for his personal advantage. Carlos lY. had allowed the sceptre to slip from his feeble hands into those of a subject manifestly, or at least apparently, guilty of all these things. Let Carlos then abdicate in favour of the heir, Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, who had long been kept in a kind of palace imprisonment, allowed to play no part in public affairs, and destined perhaps, they whispered, to be poisoned, as it was boldly said, his young wife had been poisoned.

So one day, when Marshal Bessi^res was crossing the Pyrenees with thirty thousand French troops at his back, the People made Ferdinand King by acclamation. The cowed astonished old King signed his abdication ; Godoy, thankful to escape with life, was dragged to prison, and Ferdinand VII., the Desired, Ferdinand the reticent and unknown, reigned in their stead.

Now should all have gone well with Spain, but the Emperor of the French delayed to recognise the new King ; a matter of no great concern to the People, but of much to him and his advisers. For Napoleon's hand was already laid on the Peninsula, and his iron fingers were felt gradually closing upon it. Carlos lY. appealed to the Emperor against his son and successor. The Emperor gave no decisive answer, having in fact long ago decided the matter in his own mind. He spoke of visiting Madrid to confer with Ferdinand. Meanwhile he sent thither his bird of evil omen, Savary, toiling for a dukedom and laden ostensibly with the Imperial luggage ; actually with other things, amongst which was a trap to catch royalties. A pair of well-known boots and the celebrated little hat were deposited at the palace as signs and tokens of the Emperor's advent. Nevertheless the Emperor did not come. Then it was announced that he would meet King Ferdinand at Burgos. Xhe mighty gilded coach was got under weigh, and amid the murmurs of ike MadrilefioB the King rolled northward along that magnificent royal road which had of old seen prouder progresses ; Infantas of Spain passing along it to the throne of France, daughters of France to be welcomed as Queens of Spain.

At Burgos there were French troops, but no EmpercMr. The King went on to Vittoria, and there found four thousand troops ot the Imperial Guard, but again no Emperor. A letter from Ferdinand's brother Carlos, who had gone on before him, announced the Emperor as but just expected at Bayonne. The King waited fire days, importuned all the while by faithful subjects to escape while yet there was time ; for there were Spanish troops at Bilbao. He and his counsellors hesitated, spurning, indeed, the suggestion that Napoleon could meditate an act of most flagitious treason, yet waiting uneasily to hear more of his intentions. At length a letter came from the Great Man, still indecisive, but friendly, encouraging on the whole. He would arrange everything at Bayonne. The great gilded coach was once more brought out and rolled towards the frontier, amid the groans and warnings of the People, who were ready to cut the traces of the horses and rescue their King from the French with their bare hands.

But the King went on and crossed the frontier and reached Bayonne. And there it happened to him and to his brother and to all his family according to what the People had said. They did not return. The Emperor proclaimed the Bourbons deposed from the throne of Spain, and his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, King in their stead. It seemed to him a simple thing to do. He had done it in other countries.

Ferdinand VII., Don Oarlos, and their uncle Don Antonio were imprisoned in the Oastle of Valengay. This castle was chosen by the Emperor because it was in the heart of France, so that escape from it would be difficult, and because it was the country home of Talleyrand ; a Minister he could not spare, but was desirous to annoy.

When King Joseph made his State entry into Madrid, the

4 THE KINCP8 BBVOKB

lightiuDgB of revolt were flashing round the entire horizon, and the sky was black over his head* The State offidah came out to receive him, bat not the People. The streeta were not indeed empty, ifor the streets of Madrid are never empty. Oronps of men stood about as they always stand, but silent instead of exchanging the news. Grave, swarthy men, they stood with their brown cloaks flung about them, like statues of bronze, and saw with sinister eyes the Intruder and his alien soldiery go by. Oold, new &om the Mint, with the head of King Joseph upon it, was flung right and left as the King passed. Most of the brown-doaks were poor, some were beggars ; but not one stooped to pick up the gold. It lay there in the gutter until the French soldiers picked it up. This deep and silent anger of a proud people boded iU to the intrusive King, the well-meaning marionette whose strings were pulled in Paris. The long and devastating War of Independence, intertwined with our own Peninsular War, yet never one with it, had ahready begun ; and while it raged Ferdinand VII., the Desired, lay hidden from the gaze of his people in that far-off castle like some prince of FaSry under the spell of a wicked enchanter. So, yet young and idive, he became a legend, a cult, his name the oriflaiame of Spain round which his people rallied for the most part blindly, filled only with the fierce devotion of theur race. Others there were, a small minority, yet important by reason of their intelligence and education, who were ready to resist the Intruder to the last, ready to welcome back their legitimate King ; but on conditions. These were the Constitutionalists. Others, again, submitted to Joseph in all honesty, believing that the shadow of a French despot somehow represented the principles of the French Sevolution ; but these were few. More submitted out of cowardliness and self-interest, believing the power of Napoleon and the Grand Army to be irresistible. But honest men and self-seekers alike their countrymen execrated, executed when they could, as Josefinos, afrance&ados^ traitors.

And so through blood ant fire and famine the Spanish people were straggling on towards their goal— the deliyerance of Spain from the foreign invader, the return of Ferdinand YII.9 the noble and legitimate King, whose piety and virtnes should be as a magic balm healing the mortal wounds of his heroic country.

Chapter I

The Carnival came early this year. The jagged line of the Sierra still gleamed silver with snow between the sombre bine of the rolling tableland and the fresh bine of the Febmary sky, but the wind had in it scarcely a tonch of the winter's qn^ty, and the snn shone as though it had been May. And jnst as the bright snn of Spain beguiled the earth to forget it was winter, so at this carnival season the joyous temper of the Madrileflos broke ont triumphant over *' the winter of '' their '* discontent." Discontent because the hated intruder, Joseph Pepe, the One-eyed, still reigned in Madrid, and the true King, Ferdinand the Desired, still languished in the dungeons of Yalen9ay. Because the heel of a foreign soldiery was stQl heavy upon them, conmierce was mined and famine knocked at the gates of the city. There had been years when the processions of masks that pushed their way through the packed streets had worn more magnificent disguises, had perhaps been composed of more magnificent personages ; for many of the nobility had left Madrid. There had never been a year when they were gayer, more grotesque or quicker to exchange smart raillery with all challengers. The processions were hardly to be distinguished as such amid the slow-moving streams of humanity converging by many channels upon the Prado. But the great public promenade once reached, its magnificent breadth and length gave elbow-room to all Madrid, room to see and room to be seen. The processions cleared themselves from the motley crowd and defiled along the avenues or the wide central space between them : Silenus on his donkey, led by a goat-legged satyr, and followed by mssnads with long tow hair and bounding masculine legs; a band of black-robed doctors of Salamanca singing and playing on gnitara ; a man conducting a score of monstrous apes who, with hideous looks and wild antics, provoked wild outbursts of laughing terror as they pranced down the Prado; Parties of peasants there seemed to be from all the provinces of Spain, bull-fighters, majos and majas of high degree, flaunting gay jackets and Manila shawls among the less brand-new finery of the genuine beaux and belles of the Barrios.

And if the noble ladies of Madrid, avoiding their usual stroll, rolled by in glittering coaches and carriages, the citizens* wives walked under the trees with the same strutting grace, wore their black silk skirts over feet as pretty and well shod, held the folds of the mantilla as gracef ally with the left hand and spoke the language of the fan with the right as fluently as their betters. Far along the Prado the sun shone on a kaleidoscopic mass of shifting colours, on glittering points of gilt and silver, only clouded sometimes by little puffs of dust that a petulant wind blew up from under the riotous feet of danoers. A merry music thrummed and rattled from guitar and castanet, and all Madrid majos and majas^ citizens and nobles, were as frolicsome and gay as little children. Yet in the line of passing equipages was one serious face — a young and beautiful face framed in the window of a blazoned coach, a window which in its day had framed many a proud head dressed to adorn the C!ourt of Oarlos III. or even of Ferdinand YI. A carriage once engaged in the stream of vehicles passing up the Prado from the AlcaU was compelled to move at a foot's pace till it reached the end. But the passage, if slow, was sure to be enlivened by the lively impertinences, the mystifying nonsense, of some disguised acquaintance or, stranger who would jump on the step of the carriage to amuse or flirt with its occupant. Yet this stately coach, redolent of antiquity and noble alliances, had rolled more than half the length of the Prado, and although the lady in it was surely the loveliest woman there, not one of the gay peasants, the tricksy doctors, the mssnads, or even the monkeys, had stepped out of the crowd to pat an agreeably impertinent mask in at her window. One certainly, a man dif^nised as a dnelia of formidable aspect, ' had called ont some jesting remark npon her need of snch a personage — there was none sitting opposite her in the coach — and had been abont to leap on to the step when another had pnlled him back, mattering the word ** Afrancssaday The fair pallor of the lady's oval cheek had tamed a little paler and her large dark-bine eyes, the soft, veiled eyes of a dreamer, had filled with tears. A stranger wonld not have gaessed that the elegant yonng priest who sat by her side was her brother, for his hair and eyes were black, and there was a bine shade roand his red moath.

*^ Why do yoa trouble yoorself , Lnzita ? " he asked, lighting v^pajita and blowing the smoke ont though his nostrils.

" It is so dreadful to be avoided," she murmured. " It is as though we were excommunicated."

He laughed harshly.

^^What nonsense! Is not the Holy Father himself an afrancesado ? "

So they rolled on. A few bows were addressed to the young Marquesa from other ^Carriages, and many furtively admiring looks. Her brother, the Abb6, continued to chat with a purposed air of gaiety, but she could do no more than hold high her graceful head,' crowned with its chestnut hair, carved comb and black mantilla, lest it should droop in a too manifest shame and dejection.

"Why are you so dull, Lnzita?*' asked the AbW, impatiently. " You should try to amuse me and make me f oiget this horrible dress of mine."

" Do not call it horrible, dear brother. Ton look very nice in it. I cannot bear a man to be but half a priest, living and dressing just like one of the laity."

The Abbi made a face.

** Woe is me I It is the accursed French Bevolution which has brought tiiese philosophic notions into fashion everywhere. The old ones were more than good enough for me. But I must cut my coat according to my cloth — ^that is, according to the opinions of our pedantic, new-fangled King Pepe. But look, little sister I *' And he kid his hand on Dofia Luz*s arm Yfi&L sudden animation. '* There is the Oarmona close by us in the Andalusian dress. She also is an c^ancesada^ but the Madrilefios will forgive anything to a creature who amuses them. Caramba / What a fine woman ! Though it must be confessed I have seen her look handsomer. It is at the theatre you must see and, above all, hear her."

. The popular cantatrke had removed her mask, either to cool her face or because she did not find it so entertaining as she had expected to pass a whole day unrecognised. She was dancing and playing the castanets in company with a man disguised as an Andalusian, whilst another sat on the ground and twanged a guitar. A little circle had formed round the group and the people passing by in carriages stopped them to look. Her partner was a small man of an elegant and active build, and danced to perfection. When the Abb6 and Dofia Luz had been spectators but a few minutes the dance came to an end, amid a burst of applause from the by-standers, and the carriages rolled on. The blazoned coach had not gone far when a mask leaped on the step, and, thrusting his head in on that side, cried in the Abb6*s face, as it is usual to cry to one who wears a mask —

«/ know thee 1"

" That is not difficult, friend," returned the Abb*, laughmg, *^ for I am not disguised."

The mask was the Oarmona*s partner. He replied in a high feigned voice —

" But by the life of San Geronuno, Sefior Abate, you are very well disguised. If one did not know thee as I do, Diego of the Devil, one might mistake thee for a man of God."

He dropped down from the step, appeared at the other

'^ Pascaal mtust not abandon his King I *'

'* I have Bome inflaence with a lady who in her torn has influence with this pedantic old rake of a Pepe. — ^Ah, blond Innocence, he admires you also 1 — ^And it seems to me possible that on the pretext of reconciling oar mayarazgo with the new rSgime^ I might obtain leave to visit yalen9ay. If he should prove obstinate, I myself will offer my services to our legitimate King, although they can hardly be so acceptable. But the reason I mention the matter to you, Luzita, is that I wish you— most particularly I— to accompany me, if I get permission to go."

" I, Diego ? At Don Alonzo's age how could he "

^' I was not speaking of your husband, no, indeed I I was speaking of you."

*' Diego I I cannot leave the Marqute I No, it is not possible, not possible I "

^* Everything is possible when one has the interest of one's family at heart. It is important to persuade Pascual to have patience."

The Abb6 paused, looked at his sister again with that ironical side-glance, and resumed, almost in a whisper —

'^ And then I have always believed, Luzita, that although up there " — ^his white jewelled finger touched the little rings of shining hair on her temple — *^ you are a Josefina, down here, oh I but deep down here " — ^they lighted for an instant on the folds of the mantilla over the region of her heart — "you fervently adore our noble, legitimate King Ferdinand VII."

The rose flush sprang again to Luzita's cheek.

" Dear brother, I thought I had concealed it from all the world I Do not think I blame you, who are so much cleverer than I, still less my husband ; but I sometimes wonder whether, feeling as I do that King Joseph is a usurper— though I am sorry for him, too, poor man I whether 1 did right to marry Don Alonzo."

The Abb^ broke into a short laugh.

THE KING'S BBVOKE 13

" Eight to marry him 1 What a " He was about to

Bay, '' What a fool the girl is I " but checked himself. '' What strange ideas you have I Yoa should thank the Blessed Yii^in three times a day for sending you a husband, and a marquess into the bargain."

** I do thank her for it constantly, Diego " — ^Luzita crossed herself and kissed her thumb— "and pray that Don Alonzo may be rewarded for his kindness and generosity in marrying a portionless girl."

" You do well, little sister. But revenons d nos motUons. It will take some diplomacy to make our presence there satisfactory to King Pepe and King Ferdinand at once, eh ? **

^ If you are able to go, brother, what need of me ? "

"Much need, Luzita. Pascual was always as obstinate as a mule with me, but he has some affection for you, and your influence would be of the greatest service. Besides " — and the Abb6 smiled and pinched her soft cheek — " there is no more useful ally for a diplomatist anywhere than a pretty, a very pretty woman. Ah I in a few years, Marquesita, you will know your own importance only too well, and will refuse to be advised by a poor Abb6 ! "

Luzita cried out at such nonsense. Yet she felt flattered at being treated in this way by Di^o, of whom she had formerly been so much afraid. He Iwd been so kind and pleasant of late that she had almost forgotten how unkind, how harsh and contemptuous he had shown himself in the miserable year which had preceded her marriage with the Marqu6ei.

Luzita was a younger daughter in a poor and very noble family. There had been no dowry forthcoming for her, and accordingly it had been arranged from her birth that she should enter a convent. It seemed a special Providence that she should be modest, pious, thoughtful beyond her years. But when she had touched sixteen, and should have begun her novitiate, an unprecedented thing happened. The destined nun refused her destiny ; she refused to enter Beligion. She said she did not feel a real vocation for the religious life, and to take the vows and afterwards live in a convent precisely as people live who are in tke world — the compromise nsnally resorted to by yonng ladies in her situation— appeared to her wrong. The dilemma in which^ a noble family was placed, threatened with a daughter who could not be married and would not take the only other possible stop for a young person of family, was torrible indeed. It was more torrible still for the culprit. Life was made very hard for her. Just when it had been made ahnost harder than she could endure, deliverance came in the shape of her father's old friend, Don Alonzo, the Marqu6s de Santa Ooloma. He took pity on the poor child and married her. Then he went back to Madrid, taking his wife and leaving his old! friend the Count de YiUarta sulking in his castle in Estremadura, where he had been ever since the disappearance of the Bourbons. But, aftor all, some time or other peace must be made with facts. The Abb6, who had been brought up in the expectation of holding a benefice without being compelled to take full orders, had already accepted the new dynasty and accommodated himself to the new ideas, however inconvenient. As for Luzita herself, if she had new and romantic notions about the religious Ufe, she had, none whatever about marriage. She was transported with joy and gratitude when she heard that Don Alonzo had offered to marry her— had married him and never repented it ; unless such a purely political scruple as that she had confessed to the Abb^ can be called repentance.

Chapter II

It had been the cnstom long before the days of King Joseph for the authorities to forbid masks at the Carnival ; bat the very same persons who as officers of State issued such a prohibition would as mere individuals be sure to notify the world that their doors would be wide open to the parties of masks who passed the evening going from house to house. The Spaniards who had taken office under the new King neither closed their doors nor issued a general invitation. They knew not whether to prefer the Scylla of complete desertion or the Charybdis of unfriendly visits. It was perhaps for mutual comfort and protection that the set of Josefino nobles who met in turn at each other's houses were mustered in force at the Marqu6s de Santa Coloma*s house in the Barquillo. The Marquesa's tertidia was ever gay and well arranged, in spite of the youth and inexperience of the hostess, for the Marqu6s himself had devoted nearly seventy years to the art of society, and left his wife nothing to do except to look beautiful and apply herself to acquuring the habit of superficial liveliness and verbal wit which it demanded. He was a tiny, wrinkled gentleman, wearing a lace cravat and a powdered queue; his manners were perfection, his heart excellent, and his brain non-existent. He was as much ridiculed as any one in a society which had made ridicule its finest accomplishment, and more beloved than most.

When all had been assembled for an hour or more, and the gaming, conversation, and love-making were in full swing, the door of the sola was flung open and a footman announced a party of masks. There was a pause, a thrill, part pleasure, part uneasiness ; but in an instant, when the hastonero^ the leader of the party, appeared, unmasked and bearing his wand of office, the pleasure swept all before it. He was an actor, an old favourite in Madrid, and of a permitted colourlessness in his political opinions. An applausive rattle of fans, laughter and bravos burst out to meet him and his following.

Foremost behind him came a man who appeared to be carrying two heads on his shoulders ; then a rout of masks of all sorts and dominoes of every colour, playing on instruments, real or pretended, and singing or rather shouting a humorous ditty of no political import.

The two-headed man approached and made his bow to the young hostess. His own face was not hidden, but a thread looping up the end of his nose and a large set of false teeth made him as ugly as sin. So amused was she at the discovery that this was a real face and no mask, that she burst into a merry laugh. It was echoed at her elbow by the same laugh which had struck on her ear familiarly that afternoon. She turned and saw the Andalusian of the Prado. Her questioning eye ran rapidly over his figure. He was completely masked, and his hair was covered by a tow wig and a high, almost conical, hat. She could not recognize anythmg about him. Nevertheless, " / know thee I '' she whispered boldly.

" But I do not know you, Dofia Luz," ke answered, only half mockingly. " What a great lady you have become, and, vive Dios ! what a handsome one 1 '*

" Was I ugly when you knew me, sir ? Then it must have been before I can remember."

<< Are you grown vain and coquettish, Luzita ? I liked you best as you were, so good, so easily tricked "

" Jesus I How I wonder who you can be I " she cried, forgetting to pretend she knew. ^' Tell me at least what letter your name begins with."

She ran through several, and each was rejected.

THE KINO'S REVOKE 17

**Come/' he said, a trifle impatientlj, ^ 70a are onlacky 1 Ijet OS talk aboat flomething else.**

" Do let me see a bit of yonr face, jnst the least little, bit, or I shall die of cariosity.'*

*^ Bat if some one else saw it I might have to die in good earnest.'*

At these words Lazita^s poises qaickened with an excitement greater than that of mere cariosity. This most be one of the many friends and connections of her family who had thrown in their lot with the patriotic party. She longed yet more to see his face, and to tell him that she and heis were not really against their coantry, against their rightf al King, only the victims of circamstance. The doable-headed man who had stood in silence a little apart, yet screening the pair from observation, now moved farther away and began a noisy qnarrel between his two heads. Everybody crowded to listen and laagh and take one side or the other. Undercover of the hnbbnb the Andalasian said in a natnral voice, ** I have something of importance to say to yon, Marqaesita. Where can I see you alone ? "

« I don't think I ought •*

** Santo Dio8 ! I am no gallant, and this is no time for pruderies. Oan I speak to you alone, Luzita ? "

Luzita hesitated like Launcelot Oobbo between the Fiend and Conscience, but did not hesitate so long. For when Conscience is after all but a kind of timidity, and Satan is a* gentleman, it may be guessed to which side a romantic young lady will incline.

*^A window is ajar behind those curtains," she faltered. *' Turn to your left when you are on the balcony, and wait near the fifth window.'*

Here the double-headed man snatched the Andalusian away by the arm and in a moment they were dancing a caricature. Leaving his partner, the double-headed man now made his way to a large alcove where sat a circle of ladies watching these Carnival antics, each with fan in hand and cavalier in attendance. All the company flowed in the same direction ; for they had by now recognised in him a favourite actor, seldom seen in Madrid since the arrival of King Joseph. Thns all eyes were turned away from the window when the Andalusian slipped out on to the balcony.

" What a lie you told, brother," said the face to the mask on the same shoulders; ''you told me we were going to heaven."