There was a mistake in the spelling.
The royal adventure There are halting-places
in the lives of most men when for a period the individual
desire must give place to some great national need.
We each live our little story through, but at times
we find ourselves dragged from the narrow way into
the great high road, where the history of the world
blunders to an end which cannot even yet be dimly discerned.
When Marcos rode into Saragossa after nightfall he
found the streets filled by groups of anxious men.
The nerves of civilisation were at a great tension
at this time. Sedan was past. Paris was already
besieged. All the French-speaking people thought
that the end of the world must needs be at hand.
The Pope had been deprived of his temporal power.
The great foundations of the world seemed to tremble
beneath the onward tread of inexorable history.
In Spain itself, no man knew what might happen next.
There seemed no depth to which the land of ancient
glory might not be doomed to descend. Cuba was
in wild revolt. Thousands of lives had been uselessly
thrown away. Already the pride of the proudest
nation since Rome, had been humbled by the just interference
of the United States. A kingdom without a king,
Spain had hawked her crown round Europe. For a
throne, as for humbler posts, it is easy enough to
find second-rate men who have no special groove, nor
any capacity to delve one, but the first-rate men
are, one discovers, nearly always occupied elsewhere.
They are never waiting for something to turn up.
Spain, with her three crowns in her hand, had called
at every Court in Europe. She had thrown two
nations into the greatest war of civilised ages.
She was still looking for a king, still calling hopelessly
to the second-rate royalties. Leopold of Hohenzollern
would have accepted had not France arisen to object,
only to receive a sound thrashing for her pains.
Thus, for the second time in the world’s history,
Spain was the means of bringing a French empire to
the dust.
Ferdinand of Portugal, a cousin to the Queen of England,
himself a Coburg, finally declined the honour.
And Spain could not wait. There was a certain
picturesqueness in Prim, the usual ornamental General
through whose hands Spain has passed and repassed
during the last century. He was a hard man, and
the men of Spain, unlike the French, understand a
martinet. But Spain could not wait. She must
have a king; for the regency was wearisome. It
was weary of itself, like an old man ready to die.
There was no money in the public coffers. The
Cortes was a house of words. Here eloquence reigned
supreme; and eloquence never yet made an empire.
Half a dozen different parties made speeches at each
other, but Spain, owing to a blessed immunity from
the cheap newspaper, was spared these speeches.
She was told that Castelar was the eloquent orator
of the age.
