It is tolerated like so many relics of the past, but it inspires no enthusiasm and no one is inclined to sacrifice themselves for it, and I believe that even the people who live in its shadow, and whose interests are most bound up with those of the crown, have more devotion on their tongues than in their hearts." "It is so, Don Luis," said Gabriel; "for nearly a century the monarchy has been dead in Spain; the last loved and popular king was Fernando VII.

Since then the nation has asserted itself, becoming emancipated from the old traditions, but the kings have not progressed; on the contrary, they have gone back, withdrawing themselves daily more and more from the anticlerical and reforming tendencies of the first Bourbons.

If in educating a prince nowadays his masters were to say, 'We will try and make a Carlos III.

of him,' even the stones of the palace would be scandalised.

The Austrians have revived like those parasitic plants which, having been torn up, reappear after a little while.