Meanwhile, the "volunteers of liberty," as the Basque Republicans called themselves, ensconced their persons out of range in a sort of castle beside the church of Fontarabia's "wooded height," and amused themselves taking pot-shots at the rising sun. But they did not venture from their shelter; they knew a large body of armed Royalists were watching their movements from the summit of Cape Higuer, and only awaited the provoke to pounce down upon and swallow them. A detachment of Frenchmen from the frontier hamlet of Hendaye quietly took up ground on the strand to see that there was no breach of neutrality, and had an uninterrupted view of the whole operation. As soon as the daring little privateer had done her work she innocently steamed to Socoa; the Carlists on the hills waved adieu and disappeared; the French soldiers returned to their quarters; and the Fontarabian "volunteers of liberty "—well, most probably they swore terribly, and effected a masterly retrograde movement on the nearest posada.

I had a call to board the San Margarita. Not a boat could be had in St. Jean de Luz for love or money; the passage from the sea into the harbour is narrow, and the fishermen, though hardy navigators, are shy of facing the current when the sea is rough. Leader and myself walked by the goat-path on the crags leading to the southern side of the harbour so as to avoid the bar, and succeeded in chartering a skiff at Socoa. A quarter of an hour's pull brought us alongside the yacht, and on sending up our cards we were at once invited on board by the owner. To my surprise I discovered that the entire crew was British, as reckless a set of dare-devils as ever cut out a craft from under an enemy's guns. The skipper, Mr. Travers, was a Cork man, an ex-officer of the Indian Navy, who had lost a finger during the Mutiny; but the life and soul of the enterprise was an ex-officer of the Austrian and Mexican armies, Charles-Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, great-grandson of "the Young Pretender." His uncle, John Sobieski Stuart, had resigned his claim to the throne of England on his behalf,[C] so that I actually shook the hand of the man who under other circumstances might be wielding the sceptre of that empire on which the sun never sets. Instead of a crown he wore the genuine old Highland bonnet—not that modern innovation, the military feather-bonnet. In face this descendant of royalty was an unmistakable Stuart, with the characteristic aquiline nose, and a proud dignity of expression. He might have sat for the portrait of Charles the Martyr-King, by Vandyck, in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest supporter of the claims of Carlos Septimo, whom he regarded as a cousin, and a sort of modern counterpart of the young Chevalier, the "darling Charlie" of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the hospitality of his nation, and we had a long chat as we paced the deck briskly, the Count discussing the prospects of the rising, and then verging off into gay anecdotes of his military career in Austria, and inquiries after mutual acquaintances in London. By-and-by Captain Travers made his appearance, a tall weather-beaten navigator in orthodox naval dress, with a glass in his eye. He bowed severely to the Stuart, who as coldly returned his salute. It was easy to perceive that there was a restraint in the demeanour of the men on both sides; but there was a tacit armistice for the occasion. I heard afterwards that they did not talk to each other, except on strict matters of duty, and when taking their short walks on deck, one confined himself religiously to the larboard, the other to the starboard. Travers took me in tow, while the alert Count with his quick manner strode to and fro with Leader, and kept up a jerky fire of conversation nearly all to himself, occasionally twirling his peaked beard. Travers and I lolled over the bulwarks, and laughed and sampled the contents of an aqua-vitae bottle, "Special Jury" whisky from Ireland, and I learned that this ill-assorted pair had been sharing some close hazards on their audacious cruiser.

A few days previously they had been chased by El Aspirante, a Spanish gun-boat, which gave them eight shots. One caught them on the port quarter, and shivered some timbers, but effected no more serious damage.

"I wish we had only an Armstrong twenty-four pounder close handy," said the mate, "and we'd have saved them 'ere dons the price of a coffin, I'd take my davy!"

From what I saw of the seamen, I think this was no empty boast. Some of them had served with one Captain Semmes on a certain craft called the Alabama, and had been picked up after the fight with the Keasarge, off Cherbourg, by Mr. John Lancaster's yacht, the Deerhound. There is no need for concealment now, so that I may freely admit that the Deerhound and the San Margarita were one and the same. Travers, who was in love with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to the screw he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship in the Spanish navy. At leaving, I was asked to take a trip with them; they were about to visit their floating arsenal in the Bay of Biscay, load, and try to run another cargo. I respectfully declined—fortunately for myself; my orders were to get to the Carlist headquarters, not to go playing Paul Jones.

Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross the border, and readily acceded to my request to form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next morning and looked out of window for the San Margarita. The roadstead of Socoa was a blank. She had steamed away during the night. After the customary chocolate we started blithely, in a light basket-carriage with a pair of fast-trotting ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours to the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight, the road up the mountain being impracticable for vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to show us over the border by the smuggler's path—a wild short-cut through a labyrinth of brushwood. The guide was a remarkable youth in his way; he understood not a syllable of French or Spanish, and spoke only Basque which none of us comprehended, so that our parley with him was somewhat uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit the opinions of that guide. A lad who could strike the path up the mountain with such truth might, by some instinct, have seen his way through Spanish politics. Our walk was a trial of endurance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and that was fatiguing enough in all conscience; but now the sun was beating cruelly on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me, with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There was no further need to be wary, for this was Spain. We were over the border, and now my companions could breathe freely in every sense. Before they had passed the imaginary line they were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes, conducted back and interned, for they had that about their persons which betrayed that they were no innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a scud was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles by the wayside, and an advance party of one was thrown out to reconnoitre. The precautions were superfluous, if we knew but all. From the 15th of July, the French patrols had got the hint to be blind. So lax was the cordon on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a solitary French uniform.

The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On one side extend the plains of France, washed by the greenish-blue waves of the Bay of Biscay, and studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of Fontarabia, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of Navarre and Guipuzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from grass and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting with ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands. Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent, and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered no molestation; but others might not have escaped unpleasantness. The agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had to pay toll, if the story were true that a few of the dispersed "Black Legion" had got off with their rifles and started a joint-stock company in the bush-whacking line, and were doing a pretty fair business.

The descent on the Spanish side was almost precipitous, and had to be effected with exceeding care. At times we ran down the track, rugged with sharp crags, almost head foremost, and only saved ourselves from falling by clinging to the nearest sapling. But there is an end to everything, and at last we came on the road that dips into the village of Echalar, in the district of Pampeluna, province of Navarre. Here we dismissed our guide, and here I encountered, for the first time, a regularly organized Carlist company, detached from the fifth battalion of Navarre, which was in garrison at Vera, some eight miles distant; but as I shall have opportunity to speak of the entire battalion soon, I defer comment on its appearance.

My companions were desirous of pushing forward, and the provisional alcalde of the village gave us a trap to take us on. There is an excellent road by the mountain-side, until a tunnel to the right is reached, when we entered a most picturesque, well-wooded defile, through which the Bidassoa pours its waters. We dashed along gaily until we came in sight of the steeple of the church of Vera at twilight.

A cry of "Who goes there?" from the gloom arrested us at the entrance of the town.

Leader sung out, "Espana."

Again came the sentinel's cry, "What people?" and cheerily ran the answer, "Voluntarios de Carlos Septimo!"

"Pass," was the reply; and we took the street at a trot, and pulled up at the door of the parish priest's dwelling, where the Irish soldiers of fortune promised me a billet for the night. The kindly pastor was equal to expectations; we had a cordial welcome, a good dinner, and beds with clean sheets.

Sad tidings met my companions—those of the death of a young friend, Mr. John Scannel Taylor, a native of Cork, in the service of Don Carlos. A few months previously he had been a promising law student in the Queen's University of Ireland, with every prospect of a bright career before him. He arrived from England in the middle of June, and attached Himself to the partida of General Lizarraga in order to be near his fellow-countryman, Smith Sheehan. Previous to Mr. Sheehan's returning to Bayonne with despatches, he tossed up a coin to decide whether he or Taylor should have the choice of the duty. Poor Taylor won, and elected to remain with Lizarraga, as there was likelihood of fighting at hand. The very next day Yvero, where the Republicans held a strongly-intrenched position, was attacked, and the young Irish volunteer made himself conspicuous in the onset. While advancing in the open, setting a pattern of bravery to all by the steady way he delivered his fire, the gallant fellow was struck by a bullet in the leg. He kept on limping until he was touched a second time in the arm, but still he persevered with a dogged courage, when a third bullet struck him in the forehead, and he dropped with outspread arms, raising a little cloud of dust. He must have been stone-dead before he reached the ground. His conduct was "muy valiente," so said his Spanish comrades. He was picked up after the affair, and decently interred side by side with two officers who met their deaths in his company. This was the first time he was under fire, as it was the last; but there is a fatality in those things.

This young Irishman, Taylor, was luckier than some of his fellows in one respect. Short as he had been in the service, he had attracted the notice of Don Carlos. His comrade Sheehan and he were pointed out to "the King" by Lizarraga as two modest deserving young soldiers who had offered to fight in the ranks—a trait of unselfishness that must have astonished the Carlist leaders, as most of the volunteers they had from France came out with the full intention of commanding brigades, when divisions were not to be had.

"I wish I had a thousand like them," said Lizarraga, who was a genuine soldier, and one of the few Spaniards not unjust to foreigners.

Don Carlos shook hands with Mr. Taylor and thanked him. His Majesty spoke some few minutes in French with Mr. Sheehan, and, as the conversation gives some insight into Carlism, I may venture to repeat it.

Don Carlos.—"You have served before?"

Irish Soldier.—"Yes, sire, in the Pontifical Zouaves."

Don Carlos.—"Ha! good. In the same company with my brother, perhaps?"

Irish Soldier.—"No; but I had the privilege of knowing Don Alfonso."

Don Carlos.—"He is in Catalonia now, and has many of your old companions in arms with him. You are serving the same cause here as in Rome—the cause of religion and of order and of legitimate right."

Irish Soldier (bowing).—"I should not be here if I did not feel that, your Majesty."

Don Carlos (smiling).—"I thank you sincerely. General Lizarraga tells me you are Irish."

Irish Soldier.—"I come from the south of Ireland, sire."

Don Carlos.—"A country I feel much sympathy for. She has been very unhappy, has she not? Are things better now?"

Irish Soldier.—"For some years Ireland has been, improving, sire."

Don Carlos.—"That is well. She deserves better fortune, for she has a noble, faithful people."

Don Carlos drew back a pace and made a stiff military nod; the Irishman brought his rifle to the "present arms," turned on his heel, and marched back to the ranks, and thus the interview terminated.

The valley in which the little town of Vera nestles might have been that where Rasselas was brought up, so secluded, smiling, and peaceful it looks. The Bidassoa, famous in tales of the Peninsular War, flows through it, no doubt; but the Bidassoa here is a trout stream winding through meadows and fields of maize, and thoughts of bloodshed are the last that would occur to anyone contemplating its mild current. The mountains walling in the vale are lined with growths of heather, fern, and blossoming furze to their very crests, and the verdurous picture they hem is one of poetic calm and plenty. Labourers are digging away in the fields below, the tinkle of cow-bells is heard from the pastures, and anon blends with their Arcadian music the soft chiming of church-bells summoning to prayer; there is a mill with its clacking wheel, and a foundry with a tuft of smoke curling from its chimney; orchards and vineyards lie side by side with patches of corn, and along the high-road peasants pass and repass, shortening their way with song and laughter, and strings of mules or droves of swine scamper by. Another Sweet Auburn of Goldsmith, in another Happy Valley of Johnson, this cosy Vera with its river and trees would seem to any English tourist ignorant of its history; but how the English tourist would be misled! Though the peasants laugh and sing, and the labourers dig, and there are outer tokens of peace, there is no peace in the valley or town; there are sights and sounds there of war, and that of the worst kind—civil war. The mill is grinding corn for the commissariat stores, the foundry turns out shot instead of ploughshares, the boxes on the mules' backs are packed with ammunition. If you listen, you will hear the roll of drums and the shrill blowing of bugles more often than the soothing bells; if you watch, you will notice that not one man in ten is unprovided with a firearm, for this quiet-looking place is the very hotbed of Carlism; the insurrectionary headquarters for the province of Navarre; the arsenal and recruiting depot for all the provinces in revolt. The disciples of the rod have fled from it, and those of the musket have come in their stead.

At half-past four on the morning after our arrival in the mountains, I was roused from a profound sleep by the sound of the bugle. A solitary performer was blowing spiritedly into his instrument; what piece of music he was trying to execute I could not make out, but that his primary object was to "murder sleep" was evident, and he succeeded. Losing all note of time and place, I thought for a moment I was in London, and that this was a visit from the Christmas waits. But there was a liveliness in the tones incompatible with the season when the clarionet, trombone, and cornet-a-piston form a syndicate of noise, and parade the streets for halfpence. The bugle was in a jocular mood. Judge of my astonishment when I learned that this merry melody was the Carlist's reveille! The insurgents had got so far with their military organization that they had actually buglers and bugle-calls. Nay, more, they had drummers and a brass band!

Now I think of it, there is an inadvisability in my calling them insurgents while in their power; but what phrase am I to employ? In the pass in my pocket I am recommended to "the Chiefs of the Royal Army of his Catholic Majesty Charles VII.," as an inoffensive "corresponsal particular," to whom aid and protection may be safely extended. But then there are the Republicans, and if they catch me giving premature recognition in pen-and-ink to the Royalist cause, they may rightly complain that a British subject is flying in the face of the great British policy of non-intervention. I think I have discovered an escape from the dilemma. The Carlists speak of themselves as the Chicos, "the bhoys," so Chicos let them be for the future, and their opponents the troops—not that it is by any means intended to be conveyed that the troops so called are much more martial than the Chicos.

Well, the boys have got buglers who bugle with a will. They blow a blast to rouse us, another for distribution of rations; they have the assembly, the retreat, the "lights out," and all the rest, as regular as the Diddlesex Militia. I got up in the Cora's house, looked at the Cura's pictures—which were more meritorious as works of piety than as works of art—and hastened to the Plaza, where I was told there was about to be a muster of the Chicos, and I would have a leisurely opportunity of passing them under inspection. The Plaza is a flagged space enclosed on two sides by houses, some of which are over a couple of centuries old, with armorial bearings sculptured over the doors; on the third by the Municipality; and on the fourth by a grey church, lofty and large, seated on an eminence and approached by a flight of stone steps. The Municipality is a massive building, level with the street, with a colonnaded portico, and a front over which some artist in distemper had passed his brush. This facade is eloquent with mural painting, if one could only understand it all. There are symbolic figures of heroic size, coveys of cherubs, hatchments, masonic-looking emblems, and inscriptions. A Carlist sentry, dandling a naked bayonet in the hollow of his arm, was pacing to and fro in the portico, and the remaining warriors of the post were lounging about, cigarette in mouth, much as our own fellows do outside the guard-house on Commercial Square, at Gibraltar. I was curious to see the Carlist uniform. Assuredly the uniform does not make the soldier, but it goes a great way towards it. Uniformity was the least striking feature in the dress of the men before me. They were clad in the ordinary garb of the mountain-peasants. Short coarse jackets and loose trousers, confined at the waist by a faja, or girdle of bright-coloured woollen stuff, were worn by some; blouses of serge, knee-breeches, and stockings or gaiters, by others; but all, without exception, had the boina, or pancake-shaped woollen cap of the Basque provinces, and the alpargatas, or flat-soled canvas shoes. By-and-by was heard a bugle-blast and the quick, regular tread of marching men, and the head of a company came in sight. In perfect time the company paced, four deep, into the Plaza, halted, and fell into line in two ranks. Thus, in succession, seven other companies arrived, forming the fifth, battalion of Navarre, a vigorous, wiry set of men, impressing the experienced eye as excellent raw material for soldiers, albeit got up in costume very much resembling that of brigands of the Comic Opera. Physically, the natives of the hilly northern provinces are the pick of Spain. The battalion had its flag, white between two stripes of scarlet, on which was inscribed the name of the corps, and the legend, "The country for ever, but always in honour." This was, of course, written in Basque, of which my rendering is rather free, but it gives exactly the sense of the sentiment. It was soon palpable to anybody, who knows anything of such matters, that the Chicos were weak in officers of the proper stamp, and still more so in under-officers. Smoking was common in the ranks, and when the men stood at ease, they stood very much at ease indeed. The officers, in some cases, were distinguished in dress from the privates solely by gold or silver tassels dependent from their boinas, and their boinas were of blue, white, brown, or even Republican red, according to the fancy of the wearer. All the officers had revolvers and swords. The men were armed somewhat indiscriminately, one company with Chassepots, another with Remingtons; there were carbines, and percussion rifles, and smooth-bores, and even a few flint-locks; but I failed to discern a single specimen of the trabuco, the bell-mouthed blunderbuss we are accustomed to associate with the Spanish knight of the road. Ammunition was carried in a waist-belt, with a surrounding row of leather tubes lined with tin, each of which held a cartridge—in fact, the Circassian cartouch-case. There were many grizzled weather-stained veterans in the ranks who had fought with Zumalacarregui and Mina in the Seven Years' War; but as a rule the Chicos were literally boys in age, and here and there a child of twelve or fourteen might be seen measuring himself beside a patriotic musket. In relief to the peasant dresses were to be noticed frequent attempts at more soldierly costume in the shape of worn tunics of the French National Guards or Moblots, and some half-dozen uniforms of the Spanish Line, with the glazed kepi exchanged for the boina. On the top of many of the boinas, fastening the tassel, was a huge brass button, with the monogram of the "King," and the inscription, "Voluntarios, Dios, Patria, y Rey." Another sign particular of this irregular force that impressed me much was a bleeding heart embroidered on a small scrap of cloth, and sewn on the left breasts of nearly all on the ground. This appeared to be worn as a charm against bullets; and with a strong notion that it would protect them in the hour of danger, I am convinced nine out of ten of those peasants carried it. It may be as well to add that inside that embroidered patch were written, in Spanish, the words, "Stop; the heart of Jesus is here; defend me, Jesus." Many others of the Carlists carried scapulars, rosary beads, and blessed medals as pious reminders. The habit of wearing this representation of the heart of the Saviour over the region of the human heart dates so far back as the Vendean War, and had been introduced in the present instance by M. Cathelineau, grandson of the celebrated French Royalist loader.

The battalion had assembled on the Plaza to give up their old arms, and to receive a portion of those which had been landed from the San Margarita. They deposited those they had with them by sections in the Municipality, and emerged with the others, bright, brand-new Berdan breechloaders. They seemed proud of their weapons; some went so far as to kiss them; and, if looks were any criterion of feelings, their glowing faces said, as emphatically as it could be said, "Now that we have good tools, we shall show what good work we can do." Boxes of metallic ball-cartridges, centre-primed, were piled on the Plaza, and were quickly and quietly opened and distributed. Not an accident occurred in the process. Many a less wonderful phenomenon has been advertised as a miracle. I fully expected to have my coat spattered with some warrior's brains every other moment, with such a reckless rashness were the rifle-muzzles poked about. One shot did go off, while a high private was trying if his cartridge fitted to the chamber; the charge singed the hair of a captain, and the bullet lodged in the middle of the word "Prudencia" on the facade of the Municipality. The captain would have it that he was killed, spun round on his own centre like a humming-top, and finally, coming to himself, shook out his clothes in search of the lead. There was a roar of laughter, and the careless soldier who had endangered the life of his officer was allowed to pass without rebuke. That was the worst point in Carlist discipline I had seen yet. There was too much familiarity towards superiors; the rank and file lacked that fear and respect for the officers which are the strongest cement of the military fabric. This was to be explained partly because the officers were not above the men in social position, and partly because any enterprising gentleman who bought gold braid and tassels, sported a sword, and appraised himself an officer, was accepted at his own valuation.



CHAPTER IX.

The Cura of Vera—Fueros of the Basques—Carlist Discipline—Fate of the San Margarita—The Squadron of Vigilance—How a Capture was Effected—The Sea-Rovers in the Dungeon—Visit to the Prisoners—San Sebastian—A Dead Season—The Defences of a Threatened City—Souvenirs of War—The Miqueletes—In a Fix—A German Doctor's Warning.

THESE horrible and bloodthirsty Carlists turned out to be amiable individuals on acquaintance. I suppose they could put on a frown for their enemies, but for my companions and myself they had nothing but open smiles and hearty hand-grips. One great recommendation was our being billeted on the parish priest. His reverence had none of the Santa Cruz in him; he was a gentle, zealous, studious clergyman, yet was filled with the purest enthusiasm for the cause of what he regarded as legitimacy. The Don Carlos who raised the standard in 1833, he maintained, was the rightful heir to the throne of Spain. The law by which the succession had been changed was an ex post facto law, passed after his birth, and not promulgated until Ferdinand VII. had a female child. In May, 1845, that Don Carlos, really Charles V., resigned in favour of his son, Charles VI., and in September, 1868, he, in his turn, relinquished his rights to the present claimant to the throne, Charles VII., whom might God preserve.

The Cura was unusually civil towards us because we were Irish, and as Irish were presumably of clean lineage—that is to say, free from kinship with Jews or infidels. As reputed descendants of settlers from Bilbao, we were entitled to a full share in all the privileges of the province of Biscay. This was as well to know. It was a consolation to us to learn that it was an advantage to be Irish somewhere under the sun. The King of Spain is but Lord of Biscay, and has to swear under the oak-tree of Guernica to respect the fueros or customs of the province. Don Carlos had so done; he was in Spain, it was true, but where he was at the moment the Cura was unable to say; his court was perambulatory.

The fueros were abolished by the Cortes in 1841 and but partially restored in 1844, so that in inscribing them as one of the watchwords on their banner, the Basques were fighting for something more solid than glory. They cling to their rights as Britons do to Magna Charta, only with this difference—they have a clearer conception of what they are. I had been trying to arrive at some knowledge of the fueros, and obtained much information from a volume by the late Earl of Carnarvon.[D] Guipuzcoa, Alava, and Biscay, though an integral part of the Spanish monarchy, for ages enjoyed their own laws, and a recapitulation of some which were in force in Biscay will be a fair sample of all. Biscay was governed by its own national assemblies, arranged its own taxation, yielded contributions to the Sovereign as a free gift, had no militia laws, was exempt from naval impressment, provided for its own police in peace and its own defence in war. No monopoly, public or private, could be established there. Only Biscayans by birth could be nominated to ecclesiastical appointments; every Biscayan was noble, and his house was inviolable; there was perfect equality of civil rights. In short, those Basques flourished under the amplest measure of Home Rule, and had all the benefits of the Habeas Corpus Act under another name long before that Bill was legalized by the Parliament of Charles II. The liberty-loving Basques were tolerant as well as independent. The Inquisition was never vouchsafed breathing-room in their midst. When Protestants escaped from France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, they were treated to asylum amongst them.[E]

We moved about among the guerrilleros. They were mostly light-limbed and stalwart men, and were none the worse for the sprinkling of seniors of sixty and lads of sixteen. Many had the bow-legs of the mountaineer, built like the hinder pair of artillery-horses—the legs that tell of muscularity and lasting stamina. Their drill was very loose, and skill in musketry left much to be desired. They had no perception of distance-judging, and some were so grossly ignorant of the mechanism of their weapons that they knocked off the back-sights of their rifles, alleging that they hindered them from taking correct aim. The Marquis de la Hormazas—a meagre, tall, elderly man—was commandant of the battalion, and was stern in the exaction of discipline. During the stay of the Navarrese at Vera, a captain was degraded to the ranks for having entered the lists of illicit love. The Frenchwoman who was the partner of his amour was politely shown over the mountain and warned not to return.

The battalion left for the interior of the province. Leader was still too weak to enter on a campaign; Sheehan had to look after the belongings of his comrade Taylor, and break the news of his death to his mother; and I saw plainly that it was out of the question attempting to catch up the flitting headquarters of Don Carlos without a horse. Besides, I had to complete arrangements for the transmission of letters and telegraphic messages when I had any to send, and for the reception of money; in sum, to open up communication with a base. So we returned to France as we came.

On arriving at St. Jean de Luz, a startling rumour awaited us. The steel-built Carlist privateer had been captured at the mouth of the Adour; she had been taken a prize to San Sebastian; Stuart and Travers were in close custody; and there were alarmists who whispered that they would be tried by drum-head as pirates, and hung up in chains in the cause of humanity. It was well for me I did not accept the invitation to that water-party. I ran over to Bayonne to ascertain what particulars I could, saw the Carlist Junta, the British and Spanish Vice-Consuls, and from their combined and conflicting narratives was able to sift some grains of the authentic. But the sudden first report was undeniable. The weasel had been caught asleep.

The San Margarita was a serious loss to the cause. She had cost L3,500. She was very fast, being capable of a speed of between ten and eleven knots an hour, and should be equal to fourteen knots if her lifting screw had another blade. A three-bladed screw had been provided, and was to have been fitted to her stern on her return from the ill-fated expedition which put an end to her roving career. It was true that the descendant of kings was under bolts and bars. The French journals described him as a "Monsieur Stuart, a Scotch colonel, entrusted by the English Catholics with collections for the Carlist cause." They had never heard of his royal lineage, of his connection with the Austrian cavalry, or of his exploits by the side of the unhappy Maximilian in Mexico. He assumed the responsibility of ownership of the vessel. The hue-and-cry description of him was "a man of forty to forty-five years of age, over middle height, figure spare, features thin, and resolute in expression."

The burly bronzed Corkonian was also in durance, and with the pair of officers were a picked crew of thirteen Englishmen, including engineers, steward, stokers, and able-bodied seamen, and one Spanish cabin-boy. A Basque pilot, an old smuggler, familiar with every nook and crevice of the Bay of Biscay, had escaped.

If reports were credible, the San Margarita had already landed two millions of cartridges, and an immense quantity of arms. Much vexation was caused to the officers of the Spanish navy in those quarters by the stories of the daring feats she had achieved, absolutely discharging a cargo once on the very wharf of Lequeieto, as if she were a peaceful merchantman, and on another occasion sending off rifles and ammunition by small boats in the dead of night, a man-of-war lying sleepily oblivious of what was going on just outside her. It was felt that her continued impunity was a reproach, and three small vessels of the Spanish navy were commissioned to cruise between Bilbao and Bayonne on the look-out for her. This little squadron of vigilance consisted of El Aspirante and El Capricho, gun-boats, and the Buenaventura, a three-gun steam-brig. On Tuesday, August 12th, the Buenaventura, flying a George's Jack at her peak, was off Fontarabia for a portion of the day, close in shore. At nightfall she disappeared—it is now supposed into the sheltered and almost invisible inlet of Los Pasages, between Fontarabia and San Sebastian. Before daybreak on Wednesday, the Carlists under Dorregaray swarmed down from the hills covering Cape Higuer. The San Margarita came in sight, and began landing arms in the same spot where the undisturbed landing of the 28th July had been effected. Not more than three hundred stand had been put on shore, and about one hundred thousand cartridges in boxes, labelled in English "metallic rolled cartridges, centre-primed," when she had to get away, as the daylight began to play the informer. She dropped down towards Bayonne, and appears to have reached a point some four miles from the French shore (the exact distance is a moot question), where she laid to and allowed her furnaces to cool The men were "dead tired out" after their night's work, and the captain considered that he was within the protection of French waters. But there is a very ancient proverb about a pitcher and a veil, and the period of its realization had been reached at last Whilst the San Margarita was effecting the landing, a coastguard's boat had slipped from under the heights of Fontarabia, and given notice of what was going on to the Buenaventura in Los Pasages, and the brig steamed out, still with the British colours at her peak Whilst the Carlist privateer was motionless in fancied security—there was some want of prudence or vigilance there, surely—the gun-brig crept down and overhauled her before alarm could be given, and the rakish schooner-yacht, the skimmer of the seas, had the humiliation of falling a prey to a wretched slow boat that she could laugh at with steam up in the open sea. The arrest was made in the usual manner, and the captors behaved with the customary naval courtesy. They were over-joyed at their good fortune, and gave their prisoners to eat and to drink—champagne to the officers and chacoli to the men. They towed their prize into the bay of St. Sebastian, and there was triumph. The yellow and scarlet flag of Spain was over the wee San Margarita as she entered, and Colonel Stuart and Captain Travers and their companions must have felt sore, for all the good cheer and generous wine. Still there was quite a courtly scene on board—hand-shakings and reciprocal compliments—as they were marched off to the dungeon of the Castillo de la Mota on a hill in the city, where they were incarcerated. There they did not fall on such pleasant lines as afloat. The Republicans lost no time in unloading the vessel. They took off her, with a hurry that betrayed apprehension, 1,545 carbines and six Berdan breech-loaders, with a number of armourer's tools. It was remarked that the rifles supplied to the regular troops from Madrid were sighted to eight hundred metres, but that the range of those seized from the Carlists did not exceed five hundred.

I went over to San Sebastian by tug from Socoa on the 16th of August, and sent up my card to M. de Brunet, the British Vice-Consul. He said he had called on the prisoners, and that the sailors murmured at their treatment. If I went to the citadel, after three—as it was Saturday afternoon, and visiting hours commenced then—I could see them without difficulty. I did clamber up the hill, and found this was not the case. On owning that I had no pass from the military governor, I was denied admittance. Happening to meet the commandant, I represented what I wanted, and he very civilly granted me leave to visit the prisoners "para un momento." As the gates were thrown open Stuart advanced and met me, grasping my hand cordially, and slipping a letter up the sleeve of my coat. He had caught sight of me labouring up the hill, and had immediately hastened to scribble a few lines which he trusted to my sympathy with misfortune to smuggle to their destination for him. He was not mistaken, and in so doing I had no qualm of conscience. I accompanied him to his cell, and he told me the story of the capture of the San Margarita. It was substantially as I have related; they thought they were in a mare clausum, at all events they had drifted out of it on the tide of fate; but there was a nice question of international law. The ruse of hoisting the British flag was legitimate if the Buenaventura substituted her own flag before proceeding to board them. The San Margarita had the flags of more than one nation in her lockers; but the gun-brig had no power to act the policeman in neutral waters. There was the point. Travers was in a separate lodging; they had been accommodated at first in the one cell, but they could not agree—ashore as afloat the old feud existed. However, both assented to a truce in order to have a talk with me. They were cheerful, had cigars ad libitum (at their own expense, of course), and were permitted to get their rations from the Hotel de Londres in the city. The cells they occupied were bare, white-washed, low-ceiled rooms, some eight paces by six. They were not so clean or well-ventilated as Newgate cells, and the beds were spread on the floor. The captives had access to newspapers and writing materials, and it is but the due of the officers in charge to testify that they were extremely affable and disposed to make their prisoners as comfortable as possible. Still, in the close, stifling weather, to be locked up within the narrow circuit of a dungeon was limbo. The pair wore their own clothes, Travers still retaining a navy-jacket with brass buttons engraved with the initials of some yacht club, and did not complain of having been subjected to indignities. While I was with them the shadow of a face darkened the window; it was a Carlist prisoner who had hoisted himself up on the shoulders of a comrade from a yard below; he had a letter in his mouth. I took it, and slipped him a bundle of cigars for distribution among his fellow cage-birds. From this it may be deduced that the gaol regulations were not very stringent. The Carlists were treated as forfeit of war, not felons, and had no honest chance of illuminating their brows with the martyr halo of Baron von Trenck or Silvio Pellico.

San Sebastian is the most modern town in the Peninsula, having been re-built in 1816, three years after its destruction by the incensed allied troops. It is a great summer resort of wealthy Spanish idlers—a sort of Madrid-super-Mare. The attractions of the capital are to be had there, with the supplementary advantages of pure air, mountain scenery, and luxurious sea-bathing on a level sandy beach. There is a public casino, and a score of clandestine hells where a fortune can be lost in a night at monte—in short, every infernal facility for Satanic gambling. Cigarettes are cheap, and so are knives. There is an Alameda, where the band plays, and a passable imitation, of the Puerta del Sol, less the fountain, in the broad arcaded Plaza de la Constitution. There is a small theatre, a spacious bull-ring, and several commodious churches, where Pepita can talk the language of fans to her heart's content. Every attraction of Madrid which could reasonably be expected is to be had, I repeat, and hidalgos and sloe-eyed senoras speckle the promenades in the gloaming, and impart a mingled aroma of garlic and gentility, pomade and pretentiousness, to the chief town of Guipuzcoa. San Sebastian would be for Madrilenos what Paris is for Bostonians, if a few of the attractions of the "only court," which could not reasonably be expected, were not lacking—say an occasional walk round of the Intransigentes, to show their political muscles; a grandiloquent, frothy word-tempest in the Congress, and the Sunday cock-fight. I am speaking, be it understood, of San Sebastian in ordinary summers. A short twelvemonth before my visit, a pair of pouting English lips told me it was "awfully jolly."

At the date with which I am concerned, it was anything but "awfully jolly." The fifteen thousand rich visitors who were wont to flock into the city during the season had gone elsewhere to recruit their health on the sands and lose their money at the gaming-tables. They had been frightened to the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism, and San Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and her coffers were empty. The campamento of bathing-huts was ranged as usual on the velvet rim of the ear-like bay, but no bathers were there. There were more domestics than guests in the hotels; and at the table d'hote three sat down in a saloon designed for a hundred to breakfast in; and we had no butter. The peasants in the country round were afraid to bring in the produce of their dairies and barn-yards. The bull-ring was to let; conscientious barbers shaved each other or dressed the hair on the wax busts in their windows, in order to keep alive the traditions of their craft; the fiddlers in the concert-room of the casino scraped lamentations to imaginary listeners. A Sahara of dust had settled on the curtain of the theatre, and fleet-footed spiders made forages athwart it from one cobwebby stronghold to another. The once festive resort had lost its spirits completely, and all on account of this civil war. It was summer, but the city was in a state of hibernation. No business was done in the shops, the cafes were empty, most of the resident population who could afford it had emigrated, and the public squares were as vacant as if there were a perpetual siesta. There was no sign of animation, as we understand it in England. There were but three vessels in the west bay—the Buenaventura, a merchant steamer, and the San Margarita, pinioned at last, her yellow funnel cold. Sojourn in the place was insupportable. I knew not how to kill the tedious hours. I climbed again to the Castle of the Mota, inspected some English tombs on the slope of the acclivity, and noticed that if the citadel is still a position of strength, nature deserves much of the credit. The defences recently thrown up had been devised and executed carefully, and if the defenders were only true to themselves, the Carlists, with no better artillery than they possessed, might as well think of taking the moon as of entering San Sebastian. They would have a formidable fire from well-planted cannon to face; stockades, and strong earthworks, and more than one blockhouse cunningly pierced with loopholes, to carry. Even if San Sebastian was entered, the configuration of the streets was such as to give every aid to disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros. The city is built in blocks, on the American system; the wide thoroughfares cross each other at right-angles, and all of them could be swept as with a besom by a few guns en barbette behind a breastwork at either end. In this sort of work, accuracy of aim is not called for, as in that warfare up in the mountains. If it were, not much reliance could be placed on the Republican artillery. General Hidalgo had well-nigh nullified that arm of the service. A Carlist leader, in whose information and whose word confidence could be reposed, assured me that not a single Carlist had yet been killed or wounded by the Republican gunners. The estimated lists of the enemy's casualties given by both parties during the struggle, I may remark en passant, were grossly exaggerated. The butcher's bill was very small in proportion to the expenditure of gunpowder. Returning to the question of the defence of San Sebastian—even on the supposition that the main works and town were to fall into the hands of the Carlists, the citadel still remained, where a determined leader could hold out till relief came, as long as his provisions lasted. This lofty citadel is almost impregnable. It was hither the French retired in 1813, and it took General Graham all that he knew to dislodge them. If I were asked what were the prospects of the Carlists getting into the place, I should say there was but one—by crossing over a golden bridge. But that implied the possession of money, and money was precisely what the Carlists declared they needed most.

There was always the remote hazard of a Carlist rising in San Sebastian, for there were in the city the children of settlers from the rural districts who bit their thumbs at the sight of the muzzled San Margarita, and prayed that Charles VII. might have "his ain again." But they were in the minority. The Miqueletes, a soldierly body of men in scarlet Basque scones very like to the Carlist head-gear, and a blue capote with cape attached, garrisoned the citadel. They were brave and loyal to the Republic, and the object of deep grudge to the Chicos, for they were Basques of the towns. Many of these provincial militiamen had come in from the small pueblos in the neighbourhood, where they ran the risk of being eaten up by "the bhoys;" and this was the only accession to the population which redeemed the dismal, tradeless port from the appearance of having been stricken by plague and abandoned, and lent it at intervals an artificial bustle.

I sickened of San Sebastian, with its angular propriety; its high, haughty houses, holding up their heads in architectural primness; its wide geometrical streets, where there is no shade in the sun, no shelter in the wind. I began to hate it for its rectilinearity, and dub it a priggish, stuck-up, arrogant upstart among cities. What business had it to be so straight and clean and airy? Fain would I shake the dust off my feet in testimony against it; but here was the trouble. How to get away—that was a knotty problem. The railway had been torn up for months, and the armour-vested locomotives were rusting on the sidings at Hendaye. The dirty hot little tug, the Alcorta, that plies between the quay and Socoa, had left; and I grieved not, for the thought of a passage by her was nausea. Three more torturing hours never dragged their slow length along for me than those I spent on board her coming over. Try and call up to yourself three hours in a low-class cook-shop, coated an inch thick with filth, and fitted over the boiler of a penny steamer dancing a marine break-down on the Thames, opposite the outlet of the main-drainage pipes. That, intensified by strange oaths and slop-basins, was the passage by the Alcorta. But dreary, lonely San Sebastian was not to be endured. Those poor fellows above, accustomed to the wild freshness and freedom of the sea, how they must mourn and repine! By some means or other I must get back to the world that is not petrified. No diligences dare to affront the dangers of the short journey to the Irun railway-station, since three were stopped some days before, the traces cut, the horses stolen, the windows shattered, the woodwork burned, and the charred wreck left on the roadside, a terror to those who neglect to obey the commands of the Royalist leaders.

"Royalist prigants, serr!" shouted a corpulent German doctor, connected with mines in the neighbourhood, who retained fierce recollections of having been robbed of a "boney, capitalest of boneys for crossing a mountain."

I told the doctor I was about to trust to luck, and set out on foot if I could persuade nobody to provide me with a vehicle.

"Serr, you air mad, foolish mad," said the doctor. "Those horrid beebles, I tell you, are worse than prigants; if you hayff money, they will dake it; if you hayff not money, they will stroke your pack fifty times, pecause you hayff it not. They will cut your ears off; they will cut your nose off; they are plack tevils!"

I determined to trust to luck all the same. The black devils might not be all out so black as they were painted.



CHAPTER X.

Belcha's Brigands—Pale-Red Republicans—The Hyena—More about the San Margarita—Arrival of a Republican Column—The Jaunt to Los Pasages—A Sweet Surprise—"The Prettiest Girl in Spain"—A Madrid Acquaintance—A Costly Pull—The Diligence at Last—Renteria and its Defences—A Furious Ride—In France Again—Unearthing Santa Cruz—The Outlaw in his Lair—Interviewed at Last—The Truth about the Endarlasa Massacre—A Death-Warrant—The Buried Gun—Fanaticism of the Partisan-Priest.

THERE is fine scope for exaggeration in civil war; but he who wants the truth about the Montagues does not consult the Capulets. There must be bad characters amongst the Carlists, I reflected; and when they are on outpost duty at a distance from officers, and have taken a drop of aguardiente too much, they may sometimes fail to appreciate the nice distinction between meum and tuum. The band of one Belcha, which was hovering in the neighbourhood of San Sebastian, had a shady reputation. It would be unjust to tempt these simple-minded guerrilleros with the sight of a Derringer, a hunting-watch, a tobacco-pouch, or a reconnoitring-glass. All these articles are useful on the hills. But even Belcha's looters had some conscience; they drew the line at money and wedding-rings. Besides, in cases of robbery restitution was invariably made when the chiefs of the revolt were appealed to in proper form, so that on the whole the Carlists did not deserve the name the German doctor had given them. Regular soldiers do not always carry the Decalogue in their kit; there was marauding in the Peninsula, notwithstanding the iron discipline of the Iron Duke; the Summer Palace at Pekin was despoiled of its treasures by gentlemen in epaulettes, and the Franco-German War was not entirely unconnected with stories about vanishing clocks. So I would not be diverted from my purpose.

Before leaving San Sebastian I tried to obtain permission for a second visit to the citadel-prison in order to see the crew of the San Margarita, but without avail. Yet the officers in charge (all of the regular army), and indeed the privates of the local militia, were anything but truculent gaolers; they seemed willing to strain a point to oblige. The Republicanism of the officers was of a very pale red; but there was one hirsute Volunteer of Liberty who acted as chief warder, and took a delight in the occupation. He rattled his bunch of keys as if their metallic dissonance were music, grumbled at the urbanity of his superiors, and bore himself altogether as if their politics were suspicious; and he, a pure of the pure, were there as warder over that too. I nicknamed him the hyena in my own mind; but I could not conceive him laughing anywhere save in front of a garrote with a Royalist neck in the rundel, and then his laugh at best would be but the inward chuckle of a Modoc.

Stuart took the hyena coolly, regarding him as an amusing phenomenon; Travers surveyed him as he would the portrait of the Nabob on London hoardings, and pronounced him a whimsical illustration of Republican sauce. Stuart, I should have stated, was anxious that it should be known that he had caused the name of the whilom Deerhound to be erased from the list of yachts, when he chartered her as a merchant-steamer, renamed her, and went into the contraband-of-war line. It was contrary to his wish to compromise any club. The confiscated cargo was the last he had intended delivering, but he told me with a smile that ten thousand stand of rifles had already found their way to Vera. There was no legitimate explanation of the capture of the hare by the tortoise, although Travers was prepared to swear he was in French waters—he thought he was, no doubt—but he was just on the wrong side of the limit. There was one comfort. On the way to Bayonne a boat-load of men had been landed at Socoa on leave, amongst them the Basque pilot, who might otherwise have been helped to a short shrift, and the dog's death from a yard-arm.

Carlist sympathizers endeavoured to procure me a conveyance to Irun, but nobody cared to affront the loss of horses, for Belcha's band requisitioned the cattle even of those identical in political feeling—the good of the cause was their plea—so at last I was forced to say I should be glad of a trap to Los Pasages, a few miles off, whence I might be able to go forward on foot.

While I was waiting for the arrival of the vehicle, and reading El Diario, the local daily paper—a sheet the size of the palm of one's hand—until I had the contents by rote, an incident occurred to beguile suspense. The vanguard of the corps of Sanchez Bregua, the commander of the Republican Army of the North, rode into the city. They had come from Zarauz, a seaside village four leagues away—a section of mounted Chasseurs in a uniform like to that of the old British Light Dragoons. The troopers were in campaign order, with rifled carbines slung over their backs, pugarees hanging from their shakoes over their necks, and were dust-covered and sunburnt, but soldierly. They were horsed unevenly, and for light cavalry carried too great a burden. But that is not a fault peculiar to Spanish light cavalry. The average weight of the British Hussar equipped is eighteen stone. A quarter of an hour later the main body came in sight, a long column of infantry marching by fours. It was headed by a party of Civil Guards, acting as guides. As the column reached the open space by the quay, it deployed into line of companies, a movement capitally executed. The men were bigger and tougher than those of the French Line. Their uniform was similar, except that they had wings to their capotes instead of worsted epaulettes. All wore mountain-shoes, but were not hampered with tenting equipage on their knapsacks. Each battalion was led by a staff-officer, who was splendidly, or wretchedly, mounted, as his luck had served him. The company officers carried alpenstocks, and their orderlies had officers' cast foraging-caps on top of their glazed shakoes. I noticed a battalion of Cazadores, distinguished by the emblematic brass horn of chase wrought on their collars, and two companies of Engineers in uniforms entirely blue, with towers on their collars. These latter were robust, sinewy young fellows. After the infantry came a company of the 2nd Regiment of Mountain Artillery with four small pieces, each drawn by a single mule, and behind them a squadron of Mounted Chasseurs, and a long cavalcade of pack-horses and mules.

After a deal of exploration a driver was dug up, and after a deal of negotiation he consented to take me to Los Pasages. Thanks to Republican vigilance, but principally it may have been to the nature of the ground, the road thither was clear. We started at six o'clock in the evening, and after a lively spin through sylvan scenery drew up in less than an hour at the outskirts of a village on the edge of a quiet pool, which we had bordered for nigh a mile. No papers had been asked for, on leaving, at the bridge over the Urumea, where a post of volunteers kept guard by an antique and stumpy bronze howitzer, mounted on a siege-carriage, and furnished with the dolphin-handles to be seen on some of the last-century guns in the Tower Arsenal. No papers were asked for either at the Customs' station, some hundred yards farther on; but the Carabineros looked upon me as a lunatic, and significantly sibilated. None were asked for at the approach to the village. Scarcely had I alighted when a fishwife ran out of a cabin and addressed me in Basque. I could not understand her, and motioned her away, when a winsome lassie of some eighteen summers, tripping up the road, came to my aid, and began speaking in French as if she were anticipating my arrival.

"Monsieur wants a shallop to go to France?"

I was taken aback, but answered, "Yes."

"Monsieur will follow me."

And she gave me a meaning sign—half a wink, half a monition. I followed, and examined my volunteer guide more attentively. What a prize of a girl! Hair black as night, but with a glossy blackness, was parted on her smooth forehead, and retained behind, after the fashion of the country, by a coloured snood, but two thick Gretchen plaits escaped, and hung down to her waist, making one wish that she had let her whole wealth of tresses wander free. Eyes blue-black, full by turns of soft love and sparkling mischief; Creole complexion, with blood rich as marriage-wine coursing in the dimpled cheeks; teeth white as the fox's; lips of clove-pink. And what a shape had she—ripe, firm, and piquant! Do you wonder that I followed her with joy? Do you wonder that I began weaving a romance? If you do, I pity you. Did I want a shallop? Of course I did; but alas! might I not have echoed Burger's lament:

"The shallop of my peace is wrecked On Beauty's shore."

She was a Carlist, I was sure of that. All the comely maidens were Carlists. In the service of the King the most successful crimps were "dashing white sergeants" in garter and girdle. And she took me for an interesting Carlist fugitive, and she was determined to aid in my escape. How ravishing! She was a Flora Macdonald, and I—would be a Pretender. I had fully wound myself up to that as we entered Los Pasages.

Los Pasages consists of rows of houses built on either side of a basin of the sea, entered by a narrow chasm in the high rocky coast. Sailing by it, one would never imagine that that cleft in the shore-line was a gate to a natural harbour, locked against every wind, and large enough to accommodate fleets, and whose waters are generally placid as a lake. This secure haven, statio benefida carinis, is hidden away in the lap of the timbered hills, and is approached by a passage (from which its name is borrowed) which can be traversed in fifteen minutes. The change from the boisterous Bay of Biscay, with its "white horses capering without, to this Venetian expanse of water in a Swiss valley, dotted with chalets and cottages, must have the effect of a magic transformation on the emotional tar who has never been here before, and whose chance it was to lie below when his ship entered. The refuge is not unknown to English seamen, for there is a stirring trade in minerals with Cardiff, in more tranquil times. But now Los Pasages is deserted from the bar down to the uttermost point of its long river-like stretch inland, except by the smacks and small boats of the native fishers, a tiny tug, and a large steamer from Seville which is lying by the wharf. There is no noise of traffic; the one narrow street echoes to our tramping feet as I follow my charming cicerone, who has started up for me like some good spirit of a fairy-tale. She leads me to an inn, bids me enter, and flies in search of the owner of the shallop. The landlord comes to greet me, and I recognise in him an acquaintance—Maurice, a former waiter in the Fonda de Paris, in Madrid. I questioned Maurice as to my chances of getting across to Irun by land that night; but he assured me it was too late, and really dangerous; that the road was infested by gangs of desperadoes; and that it would be safer for me to travel, even in the day-time, without money or valuables. The owner of the shallop came, but as he had the audacity to ask eighty francs for transporting me round to Fontarabia, and as I had found Maurice, I resolved to stop in Los Pasages for the night.

"You have only to cross the water to-morrow morning," said Maurice, "and you are in Kenteria, where you will be sure to get a vehicle."

The backs of the houses all overlook the port, and all are balconied and furnished with flowered terraces, from which one can fish, look at his reflection, or take a header into the water at pleasure. A glorious nook for a reading-party's holiday, Los Pasages. Not if fair mysteries like my friend crop up there; but where is she, by-the-way? She does not re-appear; but Maurice will help me to discover who and what she is.

"Maurice, are there any pretty girls here?"

Maurice looks at me reproachfully.

"Senor, you have been conducted to my house by one who is acknowledged to be the prettiest in all Spain."

That night I dreamt of Eugenia, the baker's daughter, the pride of Los Pasages, who was waiting for a husband, but would have none but one who helps Charles VII. to the throne. I recorded that dream for the bachelors of Britain, and conjured them to make haste to propose for her—not that the Carlist war was hurrying to a close; but I have remarked that girls inclined to be plump at eighteen sometimes develop excessive embonpoint about eight-and-twenty. On inquiry, I found a key to the enigma which had filled me with sweet excitement. Eugenia, who had been to the citadel-prison to carry provisions to a friend in trouble, had seen me speaking to Colonel Stuart, and was anxious to serve me because of my supposed Carlist tincture. My supposed Carlist tincture did not prevent a lusty Basque boatman from charging five francs next morning for the five minutes' pull across the water to the road to Renteria, where I caught a huge yellow diligence, which had ventured to leave San Sebastian at last with the detained mails of a week. The machine was horsed in the usual manner—that is, with three mules and two nags—but how different from usual was the way-bill! With the exception of the driver and his aide, a youngster who jumped down from the box every hundred yards, and belaboured the beasts with a wattle, there was not one passenger fit to carry arms. We had a load of women and babies, a decrepit patriarch, and two boys under the fighting age. We halted at Renteria, harnessed a fresh team to our conveniency, and sent on a messenger to ascertain if the Carlists had been seen on the road. Everybody in Renteria carried a musket. All the approaches were defended by loopholed works, roofed with turf, and a perfect fortress was constructed in the centre of the town by a series of communications which had been established between the church and a block of houses in front by caponnieres. The church windows were built up and loopholed, and a semicircular tambour, banked with earth to protect it from artillery, was thrown up against the houses in the middle of the street, so as to enfilade it at either side in case of attack. There were troops of the line in Renteria, but no artillerymen, nor was there artillery to be served. Without artillery, however, the place, if properly provisioned, could not be taken, if the defending force was worth its salt.

The messenger having returned with word that all was right, we went ahead at a fearful pace on a very good road, lined with poplars, and running through a neat park-like country. Over to the right we could see the church-spire of Oyarzun, and the smoke curling from the chimneys; a little farther on we passed the debris of a diligence on the wayside; the telegraph wires along the route were broken down, and the poles taken away for firewood; we dived under a railway bridge, but never a Carlist saw we during the continuous brief mad progress over the eight miles from Renteria to the rise into Irun.

We clattered up to the rail way-station at a hand-gallop, the people rushing to the doors of the houses, and beaming welcome from smiling countenances. There was a faint attempt to cheer us. At the station a number of officials, a couple of Carabineros, and a knot of idlers were gathered. The driver descended with the gait of a conquering hero, and turned his glances in the direction of a cottage close by. An old man on crutches, a blooming matron with rosary beads at her waist, and a nut-brown maid with laughing eyes stood under the porch, embowered in tamarisk and laurel-rose. The driver strode over to them, crying out triumphantly:

"El primero! Lo! I am the first."

"How valiant you are, Pedro!" said the nut-brown maid, advancing to meet him.

"How lucky you are!" said the matron, with a grave shake of the head.

"How rash you are!" mumbled the grandfather; "you were always so."

I envied that driver, for the nut-brown maid kissed him, as she had the right to do, for she was his affianced, and had not seen him for five days.

From the Irun station to Hendaye was free from danger. I walked down through a field of maize to the Bidassoa, crossed by a ferry-boat to the other side, where a post of the 49th of the French Line were peacefully playing cards for buttons in the shade of a chestnut, and a few minutes afterwards was seated in front of a bottle of Dublin stout with the countryman who forwarded my letters and telegrams from over the border.

Naturally I had a desire to ascertain the whereabouts of Santa Cruz. The man had almost grown mythical with me. I had heard at San Sebastian that ten thousand crowns had been offered for his scalp at Tolosa, and the fondest yearning—the one satisfying aspiration of the hyena—was to tear him into shreds, chop him into sausage-meat, gouge out his eyes, or roast him before a slow fire. Which form of torment he would prefer, he had not quite settled. A sort of intuitive faculty, which has seldom led me astray, said to me that Santa Cruz was somewhere near. I revolved the matter in my mind, and fixed upon the man under whose roof he was most likely to be concealed. I went to that man and requested him bluntly to take me to the outlawed priest—I wished very much to speak to him.

He smiled and answered, "He is not here."

"The bird is flown," I said, "but the nest is warm. He is not far away."

"True," he said, "come with me."

We drove some miles—I will not say how many—and drew up at an enclosed villa, which may have been in France, but was not of it. To be plain, it was neutral territory, and my host, who knew me thoroughly, disappeared for a few moments, and said Santa Cruz was sleeping, but that he had roused him, and that he would be with us presently.

I was sitting on a garden-seat in front of the house where he was stopping, when he presented himself on the threshold, bareheaded, and in his shirt-sleeves. The outlaw priest was no slave to the conventionalities of society. He did not adjust his necktie before receiving visitors. I am not sure that he wore a necktie at all. Let me try and draw his portrait as he stood there in the doorway, in questioning attitude. A thick, burly man under thirty years of age, some five feet five in height, with broad sallow face, brawny bull-neck, and wide square-set shoulders—a squat Hercules; dark-brown hair, cut short, lies close to his head; he is bearded, and has a dark-brown pointed moustache; shaggy brows overhang his small steel-gray eyes; his nose is coarse and devoid of character; but his jaws are massive, his lips firm, and his chin determined. He is dressed like the better class of peasant, wears sandals, canvas trousers, a light brownish-gray waistcoat, and has a large leathern belt, like a horse's girth, round his waist. His expression is severe, as of one immersed in thought; with an occasional frown, as if the thought were disagreeable. His brows knit, and a shadow passes over his features when anything is mentioned that displeases him; but I was told when he smiled, the smile was of the sweetest and most amiable. I cannot say I saw him in smiling mood, but I saw him frown, and never did anyone so truly translate to me the figure of speech of "looking black." He advanced with self-possession, returned my salute without coldness or empressement, as if it were a mere matter of form, and sat down beside me. We had a long chat. Santa Cruz did not take much active part in it, but listened as his host spoke, punctuating what was said with nods of assent, and now and again dropping a guttural sentence. His maxim was that deeds were of more value than words, and he adhered to it. His host, I may interpose, was the most devoted of Carlists, and had given largely of his means to aid the cause. He had great faith in Santa Cruz, and told me in his presence (but in French, which the Cura understood but slightly) that while Santa Cruz was in the northern provinces, the King had half-a-man in his service, and that if he would now call on Cabrera he would have a man and a half, for that Santa Cruz would act with Cabrera.

"If Don Carlos does not consent to that," said my host, "you will see that he will have to return into France, and live in ignominy for the rest of his days!"

This Cura, represented in the Madrid play-house as half-drunk and dancing lewdly, was the most abstemious and chastest of men, and neither smoked nor drank wine. His fame went on increasing, as did the number of his followers. He effected prodigies with the means at his command. His friends in France supplied him with two cannon, which were smuggled across the border. He turned the foundry at Vera into a munition factory; employed women to make uniforms for his men; and insisted that the intervals between his expeditions should be given up to drill. He was dreaded, respected, admired by his band; he was strong and hardy; faced perils and privations in common with the lowest, but used no weapon but his walking-stick The priest, the anointed of God, may not shed blood. The affair of Endarlasa was the coping-stone of his career. Various accounts were related of that event; it is only fair to let Santa Cruz himself speak. This is what he told me:

At three one morning he opened fire on the guard-house occupied by the Carabineros, at the bridge over the Bidassoa, between Vera and Irun. A white flag was hoisted on the guard-house. He ordered the fire to cease, and advanced to negotiate the conditions of surrender. The enemy, who had invited him to approach, by the white flag, fired and wounded one of his men. He issued directions to take the place, and spare nobody. The place was taken, and nobody was spared. Twenty-seven dead bodies littered the Vera road that morning.

"Is it true that you pardoned two?" I asked the priest.

"No, ninguno! Porque?" he answered with astonishment. "Not one. Why should I?"

The reason I had asked was that I had been told that a couple of the Carabineros had plunged into the Bidassoa and tried to swim to the other side; but the Cura, on his own avowal, with Rhadamanthine justice had commanded them to be shot as they breasted the current, and they were shot. He was no believer in half-measures.

A lady partisan of his, who had dined with him the day before, told me he never breathed a syllable of the attack he meditated, to her or any of his band. An English gentleman, who visited the ground while the corpses were still upon it, assured me that the sight was horrifying, and, such was the panic in Irun, that he verily believed Santa Cruz might have taken the town the same afternoon, had he appeared before it with four men.

To pursue the story of the redoubtable Cura. The bruit of his exploits had gone abroad, and among certain Carlists it seemed to be the opinion, as one of them remarked to me, that "Il a fait de grandes choses, mais de grandes betises aussi." He was making war altogether too seriously for their tastes. Antonio Lizarraga was appointed Commandant-General of Guipuzcoa about that period, and ordered Santa Cruz to report to him. Santa Cruz, who was in the field before him, and had five times as many men under his control, paid no heed to his orders. Lizarraga then sent him a death-warrant, which is so curious a document that I make no apology for appending it in full:

TRANSLATION.

(A seal on which is inscribed "Royal Army of the North, General Command of Guipuzcoa.")

"The sixteenth day of the present month, I gave orders to all the forces under my command, that they should proceed to capture you, and that immediately after you had received the benefit of clergy they should execute you.

"This sentence I pronounced on account of your insubordination towards me, you having disobeyed me several times, and having taken no notice of the repeated commands I sent you to present yourself before me to declare what you had to say in your own defence in the inquiry instituted against you by my directions.

"For the last time I ask of you to present yourself to me, the instant this communication is received; in default of which I notify to you that every means will be used to effect your arrest; that your disobedience and the unqualifiable acts laid to your charge will be published in all the newspapers; and that the condign punishment they deserve will be duly exacted.

"God grant you many years.

"The Brigadier-General Commanding.

(Signed) "ANTONIO LIZARRAGA.

"Campo Del Honor, 28th of March, 1873.

"Senor Don Manuel Santa Cruz."

"Note.—Have the goodness to acknowledge this, my communication."

This missive was received by Santa Cruz, but he never acknowledged it. His host permitted me to read and copy the original.

"Is not that arbitrary?" he said to me in English; "very much like what you call Jedburgh justice; hanging a man first and trying him afterwards. Lizarraga says, 'This sentence I pronounced'—all is finished apparently there; and yet he cites the man whom he has ordered to be immediately executed to appear before him to declare what he has to say!"

Another phrase in this death-warrant, which escaped the host, impressed me with its naivete:

"God grant you many years."

But Lizarraga, in this politeness of custom, meant no more, it is to be presumed, than did the Irish hangman who expostulated with his client in the condemned cell:

"Long life to ye, Mr. Hinery! and make haste, the people are getting onpatient."

Santa Cruz bit his way out of the toils, however, but not so his band. They were surrounded at Vera, caught, with a few exceptions, disarmed, assembled and addressed in Spanish by the Marquis de Valdespina, whose remarks were translated to them into Basque by the Cura of Ollo. They cried "Viva el Rey!" Their arms were subsequently restored to them, and the men were distributed among other battalions. But they still regret their old leader, and Santa Cruz is popular by the firesides of the mountaineers of Guipuzcoa. One of his mountain guns fell into the hands of Lizarraga, but the other was buried in some spot only known to himself and a few trusted companions.

During my interview I made it my business to study the priest attentively, and this is what I honestly thought of him. He was a fanatic, a sullen self-willed man with but one idea—the success of the cause; and but one ambition—that it should be said of him that it was he, Santa Cruz, who put Don Carlos on the throne of his ancestors. The globe for him was bounded by the Pyrenees and the sea; he had but one antipathy after the heretics (all who did not worship God as he did) and the Liberals, and that was Lizarraga. I considered it a mistake that Lizarraga was not the Cura of Hernialde, and Santa Cruz the Commandant-General of Guipuzcoa. The priest had a natural military instinct—I would almost go so far as to say a spice of military genius; and had he had a knowledge of the profession of arms would probably have developed into a great general of the Cossack type. His hatred to Lizarraga led him into littleness and injustice. He chuckled at the idea of Lizarraga not being able to find the buried gun, as if that were any great triumph over him; and he sneered at the idea of Lizarraga, who was not able to take Oyarzun, meditating an attempt on Tolosa. I could thoroughly understand that the Carlist priest bore malice to the officer who supplanted him and condemned him to death. But what Lizarraga did was done in compliance with the King's will. At the same time there could be no doubt that Santa Cruz was treated with scant courtesy after all he had accomplished, and had a right to feel himself ill-used, and the victim of jealous rivalry. He said that he was prepared, any day the King permitted him, to traverse the four provinces, and hold his enemies in terrorem with five hundred men. And he was the very worthy to do it. He complained bitterly that three of his followers had been shot by Lizarraga. One story relates that they stole into Guipuzcoa to levy blackmail, another that they merely went to dig up some money that was interred when the legion was disbanded. In any case they appeared in arms in a forbidden district, and incurred the capital penalty. Santa Cruz went to Bordeaux to beg for their lives at the feet of Dona Margarita. She received him most graciously, and promised to send a special courier to her husband to intercede in their behalf. Before the King's reprieve could possibly have arrived the three were executed.

As we were about to leave, a colleague who was with me asked the Cura if he would permit him to visit his camp, if it came to pass that he took up arms again in Spain.

"We shall see," said Santa Cruz; "wait till I am there."

My own conviction is that the priest held correspondents in abhorrence, and that his first impulse would have been to tie a zealous one up to a tree, and have thirty-nine blows given him with a stick. Perhaps I did him wrong, but if ever he did take up arms again, it was my firm intention to be south when he was north, for he was about the last person in creation to whose tender mercies I should care to entrust myself.



CHAPTER XI.

An Audible Battle—"Great Cry and Little Wool"—A Carlist Court Newsman—A Religious War—The Siege of Oyarzun—Madrid Rebels—"The Money of Judas"—A Manifesto from Don Carlos—An Ideal Monarch—Necessity of Social and Political Reconstruction Proclaimed—A Free Church—A Broad Policy—The King for the People—The Theological Question—Austerity in Alava—Clerical and Non-Clerical Carlists—Disavowal of Bigotry—A Republican Editor on the Carlist Creed—Character of the Basques—Drill and Discipline—Guerilleros versus Regulars.

WHEN a man's office is to chronicle war and he is within hearing of the echoes of battle, but cannot reach a spot from which the scene of action might be commanded, it is annoying in the extreme. Such was my strait on the 21st of August, a few days after my arrival from San Sebastian. I was at Hendaye, the border-town of France. From the Spanish frontier the report of heavy firing was audible for hours, apparently coming from a point between Oyarzun and Renteria. First one could distinguish the faint spatter of musketry, and afterwards the undeniable muffled roar of artillery. Then came a succession of sustained rolls as of volley-firing. About noon the action must have been at its height. The distant din was subsequently to be caught only at long intervals, as if changes of position were in course of being effected; but at three o'clock it regained force, and raged with fury until five, when it suddenly died away.

I was burning with impatience, and made several unavailing attempts to cross the Bidassoa. The ferryman, acting under instructions from the gendarmes, refused to take passengers. By the evening train a delegate from the Paris Society for the Succour of the Wounded arrived from Bayonne with a box of medicine and surgical appliances. He, too, was unable to pass into Spain. Meantime, rumour ran riot. Stories were current that there had been fearful losses.

"At eleven o'clock men were falling like flies," said one eye-witness, who succeeded in running away from the field before he fell.

Not a single medical man would leave France in response to the call of the Paris delegate for volunteers to accompany him. Were they all Republicans? Did they fear that Belcha might take a fancy to their probes and forcipes? Or did they look upon the big battles and tremendous lists of casualties in this most uncivil of civil wars as illustrations of a great cry and little wool? If the latter was their notion, they were right. Three days after this serious engagement, I learned the particulars of what had taken place. General Loma, a brigadier under Sanchez Bregua, with a column of 1,500 men, came out from San Sebastian to cover a working-party while they were endeavouring to throw up a redoubt for his guns on an eminence between Irun and Oyarzun, so as to put an end to the tussle over the possession of the latter hamlet, which was a perpetual bone of contention. The Carlists fired upon him from behind the rocks in a gorge to which he had committed himself, but were outnumbered. Word was sent to the cabecilla, Martinez, at Lesaca, and he arrived with reinforcements at the double, and encompassed Loma with such a cloud of sulphurous smoke that the Republicans had to fall back upon San Sebastian. The casualties in this Homeric combat were not appalling; there was more gunpowder than blood expended. The losses on the Republican side were one killed and fifteen wounded. On the Carlist side they were less, for the Carlists kept under cover of the fern and furze. But then it must be considered that the firing only lasted nine hours!

Don Carlos was not slow in calling the printing-press to his aid. One of his first acts after his entry into his dominions was to start an official gazette, El Cuartel Real, the first number of which is before me as I write. I have seen queer papers in my travels, from the Bugler, a regimental record brought out by the 68th Light Infantry in Burmah, to the Fiji Times, and the Epitaph, the leading organ of Tombstone City, in the territory of Arizona; but this assuredly was the queerest. It was published by Cristobal Perez, on the summit of Pena de la Plata, a Pyrenean peak. There might be less acceptable reading than a resume of its contents.

El Cuartel Real does not impose by its magnitude. It is about one-eighth the size of a London daily journal; but if it is not great by quantity it is by quality. Over the three columns of the opening page figure the three watchwords of the Royal cause, "God, Country, King." The paragraph which has the post of honour is headed "Oficial," and has in it a flavour of the Court Newsman. Here it is as it appears in the original, boldly imprinted in black type:

"S. M. el Rey (q.D.g.) continua sin novedad al frente de su leal y valiente ejercito.

"S. M. la Reina y sus augustos hijos continuan tambien sin novedad en su importante salud."

As it is not vouchsafed to everyone to understand Castilian, I may as well give a rough translation, which read herewith:

"His Majesty the King (whom God guard) continues without change at the front of his loyal and valiant army.

"Her Majesty the Queen and her august children also continue without alteration in their precious health."

Then El Cuartel Real appends what takes the place of its leading article—a reproduction of a letter from Don Carlos to his "august brother," Don Alfonso, setting forth the principles on which he appeals for Spanish support. This document is so important that I must return to it anon. Then comes a circular from the "Real Junta Gubernativa del Reino de Navarra," in session at Vera. The purport of this, epitomized in a sentence, is to raise money. Next, we arrive at the "Seccion Oficial," the most important paragraph of which announces that the Chief, Merendon, has inaugurated a Carlist movement in Toledo, with a well-armed force, exceeding 280 men—to wit, 150 horsemen and 130 infantry—and that he hopes shortly to gather numerous recruits. The "Seccion de Noticias" makes up the body of the paper, and is richer in information. We are told that the most excellent and illustrious Bishop of Urgel, accompanied by several sacerdotal and other dignitaries, arrived in the town of Urdaniz, at half-past seven on the previous Wednesday evening. His Lordship rested a night in the house of the Vicar, and left the following morning, escorted by his friend and host, the said Vicar, Brigadier Gamundi, and Colonel D. Fermin Irribarren, veterans of the Carlist army, for Elisondo. From that the prelate was reported to have started to headquarters, "to salute the King of Spain, august representative of the Christian monarchy, which is the only plank of safety in the shipwreck of the country."

The Cuartel Real warmly congratulates the Bishop on the fact of his having come to the conviction that "the present war is a religious war, and on that account eminently social"—(social in Spanish must have some peculiar shade of meaning unknown to strangers, for otherwise there is no sequence here)—and proceeds to speak with an eloquence that recalls that wretched Republican, Castelar, of the standard of faith in which resides Spanish honour and—here come two words that puzzle me, la hidalguia y la caballerosidad; but I suppose they mean nobility and chivalry, and everything of that kind. The next notice in the royal gazette is purely military, and makes known that the siege of the important town of Oyarzun has begun. "On the 20th the batteries opened fire, and, according to report, the enemy had one hundred men hors de combat." The batteries! There is a touch of genius in that phrase. Reading it, one would imagine that the Royalists had a royal regiment of artillery, and that eight pieces of cannon, at the very least, played upon the unfortunate Oyarzun. A jennet with a 4-pounder at its heels would be a more correct representation of the strength of the Carlist ordnance.

To resume the story of the siege of Oyarzun. "On the 21st," adds El Cuartel Real, "there was talk of a capitulation, and it is possible that the place has surrendered at this hour." The paragraph that succeeds it is a gem: "Of the 1,010 armed rebels in Eibar (Guipuzcoa), 210 betook themselves to San Sebastian, when they suspected the approach of the Royal forces, and the 800 remaining gave up to General Lizarraga their rifles, all of the Remington system." There is no quibble about the latter statement. The Carlists had easier ways of procuring arms than by running cargoes from England. But is there not something inimitable in the epithet "rebels"? There can be no question but that everyone is a rebel in romantic Spain—in the opinion of somebody else. The only question is, Who are the constituted authorities? Until that is settled the editor of El Cuartel Real is perfectly justified in treating the volunteers of liberty, in those districts where Charles VII. virtually reigns, as armed rebels. Although this town of Eibar had frequently risen up against the legitimate authorities named by his Majesty, it is pleasant to learn that General Lizarraga did not impose the slightest chastisement on the population, thus giving a lesson of forbearance to the "factious generals." Next we are informed that on the day the Royal forces entered Vergara, the ignominious monument erected by the Liberals in record of the greatest of treasons (the treaty between the treacherous Maroto and Espartero in 1839) was destroyed amidst enthusiasm, and the parchment in the municipal archives commemorating its erection was taken out and burned in the public square. I may add (but this I had from private sources) that the coin dug up from under the monument was cast to the wind as the money of Judas. Navarre, continues El Cuartel Real, is dominated by our valiant soldiers under the skilful direction of his Majesty; Lizarraga has occupied in a few days Mondragon, Eibar, Plasencia, Azpeitia, Vergara, and other important places in Guipuzcoa, and obtained "considerable booty of war;" the standard of legitimacy is waving triumphantly in Biscay, and Bilbao is blockaded. There the tale of victory ends; but we arrive at matters not less gratifying in another sense. The distinguished engineer, Don Mariano Lana y Sarto, has been appointed to look after the repair of the bridges destroyed by Nouvilas. Don Matias Schaso Gomez, a member of the press militant, has been promoted to be a commandant for his valour at Astigarraga, and is nominated for the laurelled cross of San Fernando; and the illustrious doctor, Senor Don Alejandro Rodriguez Hidalgo, has been named chief of the sanitary staff, and entrusted with the establishment of military hospitals.

The last paragraph in this curious little gazette, printed up amid the clouds on the summit of the Silver Hill, states that the Royal quarters were at Abarzuzu on the 17th instant, and that Estella, close by, was stubbornly resisting, but would soon be in the power of the Royalists. A column which had attempted to relieve the garrison was energetically driven back towards Lerin by two battalions commanded by his Majesty in person. But by the time El Cuartel Real came under my notice Estella had fallen, and the Carlists had put to their credit a genuine success.

As the question of Carlism is still one of prominent interest—is, indeed, what the French term an "actuality," and may crop up again any day, the letter of the claimant to the throne to Don Alfonso (alluded to some sentences above) is worth translating. It is the authoritative exposition of the aims of the would-be monarch, and of the line of policy he intended to pursue should he ever take up his residence in that coveted palace at Madrid. Its date is August 23rd, 1873, and the contents are these:

* * * * *

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"Spain has already had opportunities enough to ascertain my ideas and sentiments as man and King in various periodicals and newspapers. Yielding, nevertheless, to a general and anxiously expressed desire which has reached me from all parts of the Peninsula, I write this letter, in which I address myself, not merely to the brother of my heart, but without exception to all Spaniards, for they are my brothers as well.

"I cannot, my dear Alfonso, present myself to Spain as a Pretender to the Crown. It is my duty to believe, and I do believe, that the Crown of Spain is already placed on my forehead by the consecrated hand of the law. With this right I was born, a right which has grown, now that the fitting time has come, to a sacred obligation; but I desire that the right shall be confirmed to me by the love of my people. My business, henceforth, is to devote to the service of that people all my thoughts and powers—to die for it, or save it.

"To say that I aspire to be King of Spain, and not of a party, is superfluous, for what man worthy to be a king would be satisfied to reign over a party? In such a case he would degrade himself in his own person, descending from the high and serene region where majesty dwells, and which is beyond the reach of mean and pitiful triflings.

"I ought not to be, and I do not desire to be, King, except of all Spaniards; I exclude nobody, not even those who call themselves my enemies, for a king can have no enemies. I appeal affectionately to all, in the name of the country, even to those who appear the most estranged; and if I do not need the help of all to arrive at the throne of my ancestors, I do perhaps need their help to establish on solid and immovable bases the government of the State, and to give prosperous peace and true liberty to my beloved Spain.

"When I reflect how weighty a task it is to compass those great ends, the magnitude of the undertaking almost oppresses me with fear. True, I am filled with the most fervent desire to begin, and the resolute will to carry out, the enterprise; but I cannot hide from myself that the difficulties are immense, and that they can only be overcome by the co-operation of the men of notability, the most impartial and honest in the kingdom; and, above all, by the co-operation of the kingdom itself, gathered together in the Cortes which would truly represent the living forces and Conservative elements of Spain.

"I am prepared with such Cortes to give to Spain, as I said in my letter to the Sovereigns of Europe, a fundamental code which would prove, I trust, definitive and Spanish.

"Side by side, my brother, we have studied modern history, meditating over those great catastrophes which are at once lessons to rulers and a warning to the people. Side by side, we have also thought over and formed a common judgment that every century ought to have, and actually has, its legitimate necessities and natural aspirations.

"Old Spain stood in need of great reforms; in modern Spain we have had simply immense convulsions of overthrow. Much has been destroyed; little has been reformed. Ancient institutions, some of which cannot be revivified, have died out. An attempt has been made to create others in their place, but scarcely had they seen the light when symptoms of death set in. So much has been done, and no more. I have before me a stupendous labour, an immense social and political reconstruction. I have to set myself to building up, in this desolated country, on bases whose solidity is guaranteed by experience, a grand edifice, where every legitimate interest and every reasonable personality can find admittance.

"I do not deceive myself, my brother, when I feel confident that Spain is hungry and thirsty for justice; that she feels the urgent and imperious necessity of a government, worthy and energetic, severe and respected; and that she anxiously wishes that the law to which we all, great and small, should be subject, should reign with undisputed sway.

"Spain is not willing that outrage or offence should be offered to the faith of her fathers, believing that in Catholicity reposes the truth she understands, and that to accomplish to the full its divine mission, the Church must be free.

"Whilst knowing and not forgetting that the nineteenth century is not the sixteenth, Spain is resolved to preserve from every danger Catholic unity—the symbol of our glories, the essence of our laws, and the holy bond of concord between all Spaniards.

"The Spanish people, taught by a painful experience, desires the truth in everything, and that the King should be a king in reality, and not the shadow of a king; and that its Cortes should be the regularly appointed and peaceful gathering of the independent and incorruptible elect of the constituencies, and not tumultuous and barren assemblies of office-holders and office-seekers, servile majorities and seditious minorities.

"The Spanish people is favourable to decentralisation, and will always be so; and you know well, my dear Alfonso, that should my desires be carried out, instead of assimilating the Basque provinces to the rest of Spain, which the revolutionary spirit would fain bring to pass, the rest of Spain would be lifted to an equality in internal administration with those fortunate and noble provinces.

"It is my wish that the municipality should retain its separate existence, and the provinces likewise, proper precautions being employed to prevent possible abuses.

"My cherished thought as constant desire is to give to Spain exactly that which she does not possess, in spite of the lying clamour of some deluded people—that liberty which she only knows by name; liberty, which is the daughter of the gospel, not liberalism, which is the son of disbelief (de la protesta); liberty, in fine, which is the supremacy of the laws when the laws are just—that is to say, conformable to the designs of nature and of God.

"We, descendants of kings, admit that the people should not exist for the King so much as the King for the people; that a king should be the most honoured man amongst his people, as he is the first caballero; and that a king for the future should glory in the special title of 'father of the poor' and 'guardian of the weak.'

"At present, my dear brother, there is a very formidable question in our Spain, that of the finances. The Spanish debt is something frightful to think of; the productive forces of the country are not enough to cover it—bankruptcy is imminent. I do not know if I can save Spain from that calamity; but, if it be possible, a legitimate sovereign alone can do it. An unshakable will works wonders. If the country is poor, let all live frugally, even to the ministers; nay, even to the King himself, who should be one in feeling with Don Enrique El Doliente. If the King is foremost in setting the example, all will be easy. Let ministries be suppressed, provincial governments be reduced, offices be diminished, and the administration economized at the same time that agriculture is encouraged, industry protected, and commerce assisted. To put the finances and credit of Spain on a proper footing is a Titanic enterprise to which all governments and peoples should lend aid."