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Page 38
"We passed through the spacious court, up the noble staircase, and
through the long suites of apartments of this splendid edifice,
most of them silent and vacant, the casements closed to keep out
the heat, so that a twilight reigned throughout the mighty pile,
not a little emblematical of the dubious fortunes of its inmates.
It seemed more like traversing a convent than a palace. I ought to
have mentioned that in ascending the grand staircase we found the
portal at the head of it, opening into the royal suite of
apartments, still bearing the marks of the midnight attack upon the
palace in October last, when an attempt was made to get possession
of the persons of the little Queen and her sister, to carry them
off.... The marble casements of the doors had been shattered in
several places, and the double doors themselves pierced all over
with bullet holes, from the musketry that played upon them from the
staircase during that eventful night. What must have been the
feelings of those poor children, on listening, from their
apartment, to the horrid tumult, the outcries of a furious
multitude, and the reports of fire-arms echoing and reverberating
through the vaulted halls and spacious courts of this immense
edifice, and dubious whether their own lives were not the object of
the assault!
"After passing through various chambers of the palace, now silent
and sombre, but which I had traversed in former days, on grand
court occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII., when they were
glittering with all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great
saloon, with high-vaulted ceiling incrusted with florid devices in
porcelain, and hung with silken tapestry, but all in dim twilight,
like the rest of the palace. At one end of the saloon the door
opened to an almost interminable range of other chambers, through
which, at a distance, we had a glimpse of some indistinct figures
in black. They glided into the saloon slowly, and with noiseless
steps. It was the little Queen, with her governess, Madame Mina,
widow of the general of that name, and her guardian, the excellent
Arguelles, all in deep mourning for the Duke of Orleans. The little
Queen advanced some steps within the saloon and then paused. Madame
Mina took her station a little distance behind her. The Count
Almodovar then introduced me to the Queen in my official capacity,
and she received me with a grave and quiet welcome, expressed in a
very low voice. She is nearly twelve years of age, and is
sufficiently well grown for her years. She had a somewhat fair
complexion, quite pale, with bluish or light gray eyes; a grave
demeanor, but a graceful deportment. I could not but regard her
with deep interest, knowing what important concerns depended upon
the life of this fragile little being, and to what a stormy and
precarious career she might be destined. Her solitary position,
also, separated from all her kindred except her little sister, a
mere effigy of royalty in the hands of statesmen, and surrounded by
the formalities and ceremonials of state, which spread sterility
around the occupant of a throne."
I have quoted this passage not more on account of its intrinsic
interest, than as a specimen of the author's consummate art of conveying
an impression by what I may call the tone of his style; and this appears
in all his correspondence relating to this picturesque and eventful
period. During the four years of his residence the country was in a
constant state of excitement and often of panic. Armies were marching
over the kingdom. Madrid was in a state of siege, expecting an assault
at one time; confusion reigned amid the changing adherents about the
person of the child Queen. The duties of a minister were perplexing
enough, when the Spanish government was changing its character and its
_personnel_ with the rapidity of shifting scenes in a pantomime. "This
consumption of ministers," wrote Irving to Mr. Webster, "is appalling.
To carry on a negotiation with such transient functionaries is like
bargaining at the window of a railroad car: before you can get a reply
to a proposition the other party is out of sight."
Apart from politics, Irving's residence was full of half-melancholy
recollections and associations. In a letter to his old comrade Prince
Dolgorouki, then Russian Minister at Naples, he recalls the days of
their delightful intercourse at the D'Oubrils:--
"Time dispels charms and illusions. You remember how much I was
struck with a beautiful young woman (I will not mention names) who
appeared in a tableau as Murillo's Virgin of the Assumption? She
was young, recently married, fresh and unhackneyed in society, and
my imagination decked her out with everything that was pure,
lovely, innocent, and angelic in womanhood. She was pointed out to
me in the theatre shortly after my arrival in Madrid. I turned with
eagerness to the original of the picture that had ever remained
hung up in sanctity in my mind. I found her still handsome, though
somewhat matronly in appearance, seated, _with her daughters,_ in
the box of a fashionable nobleman, younger than herself, rich in
purse but poor in intellect, and who was openly and notoriously her
_cavalier servante_. The charm was broken, the picture fell from
the wall. She may have the customs of a depraved country and
licentious state of society to excuse her; but I can never think of
her again in the halo of feminine purity and loveliness that
surrounded the Virgin of Murillo."
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