and almost at the same moment the whole drove of bulls, tearing along at a terrific rate, without cabestros, appeared, charging straight towards us.  We did not need a second hint.  At one side of the road was the old wall of Madrid, at the other a high bank with a wide ditch beyond it.  Without a word, we put our horses at the bank,—­they had realised the situation as quickly as we had,—­jumped the ditch at a flying leap from the top of the bank, and were off across a field of young wheat.  Once only I looked behind, and saw a magnificent black bull, with his tail in the air—­a signal of attack—­on the top of the bank over which I had just leaped, preparing to follow me.  Long afterwards, as it seemed, when my horse slackened his pace, I found myself alone in a wide plain, neither bulls nor fellow-rider to be seen.  His horse had bolted in another direction from mine, and we heard afterwards that the picadores had galloped in between me and the sporting bull and turned him back.  Eventually, the cabestros appeared on the scene, and the poor misguided bulls were inveigled into the shambles for the fiesta of the morrow.  How they had ever managed to break away or gain the public road at all, we were never able to learn.

CHAPTER VI

THE COURT

During the reign of Don Alfonso XII., except during the interval when the melancholy death of his first beloved Queen, Mercedes, plunged King, Court, and people into mourning, Madrid was gayer than perhaps it has ever been.  No one loved amusement better than the young King, who was only seventeen when the military pronunciamiento of Martinez Campo called him to the throne from which his mother had been driven seven years previously.  He had taken his people, and indeed all the world, by storm, for from the first moment he had shown all the qualities which make a ruler popular, and Spain has never had a young monarch of so much promise.  He had the royal gift of memory, and an extraordinary facility in speaking foreign languages; it was said that the Russian and the Turkish envoys were the only ones with whom he was unable to converse as freely in their languages as in his own.  He was an excellent speaker, always knew the right thing to say, the best thing to do to gain the hearts of his people, and to make himself agreeable to all parties and all nationalities alike.  He was the first King of Spain to address his people de usted in place of de tu, a mark of respect which they were not slow to appreciate; he was a modern, in that he would go out alone, either on foot or riding, allowed applause in his presence at the theatres, unknown before, and himself would salute those he knew from his box.  He gave audience to all who asked, was an early riser, devoted to business when it had to be performed, was an enthusiast in all military matters, and, perhaps better than all in the