MADRID was astir early the King’s wedding morning. We left the Tower at seven o’clock, in order to get to the Puerta del Sol before the cordon of troops was drawn. We were to see the procession from the Hotel de Paris which stands at the angle of the Calle AlcalÁ and the Carerra San Jeronimo. We should see the marriage pageant cross the Puerta del Sol, the bull’s-eye of the city, pass down the AlcalÁ on the way from the palace to the church, and return by the way of the Jeronimo. Our friends, the Larz Andersons, had invited us to spend the day with them; we arrived in time for early coffee.

“How could you,” said J, “ask Villegas to let us see the show from the Prado when you had this invitation up your sleeve? This is the best place in the city.”

“I thought it would be so interesting to watch it from the royal museum.”

“So did a few hundred other people! They have been worrying and harrying him for a month. No one is allowed inside the Prado to-day, not even the head porter.”

“I think Don JosÉ might make an exception for his family and—for us.”

“Not even for himself. He is responsible for the safety of the pictures. Do you realize what that means?”

Villegas is responsible for one of the world’s greatest treasures, and is uneasy about the safety of the building that contains it. No wonder Lucia complains her husband does not sleep as well as he once did.

We waited for the procession in the dining-room of the Paris, a comfortable low-ceiled room with a suggestion of a ship’s dining cabin about it. A table had been engaged for us in the window. The last guest to arrive was Don Jaime, who strolled in leisurely after the streets had been closed to other people for two hours. The Don had on a new coat, a white waistcoat and a gardenia in his buttonhole; it was pleasant to see him dressed for once as he deserved.

“I passed the nuncio of the holy Pap driving to the church,” he said. “They will not tardy greatly now.”

A few minutes later the first of the fifty gala wedding coaches came in sight. Though of varying degrees of splendor they were all on the same general plan of those we had seen when Sir Maurice de Bunsen presented his credentials. That day one Ambassador and his suite had been escorted in state to the palace; to-day the whole court and all the wedding guests must be transported from the palace to the church. Could the wonderful carriages, the proud horses, the ostrich plumes, the trappings, wigs, galloons and silk stockings hold out?

They did; they grew finer and finer. One coach was of tortoise shell, one blue and silver, one purple and gold lacquer. All the shining company of princes, grandees, ambassadors extraordinary, court ladies, maids of honor, was magnificently conveyed in gala coaches drawn by noble horses with nodding feathered head-dresses, all attended by grooms in satin liveries. It was a torrent of dazzling splendor that wearied the eyes and stunned the imagination.

“I have been forty years in diplomacy,” said a dapper old gentleman with a single eyeglass, who sat at the next table; “I have seen most of the royal marriages of my time; I never saw anything to compare to this.”

The bride rode with her mother in the tortoise-shell coach; they were talking together as they passed. Princess Beatrice looked pale and grave, the bride happy, expectant, calm, as every bride should look. In the last coach, a marvel of crystal and gold, rode the King behind eight proud cream-colored horses. They ambled daintily along, tossing and tossing their heads so the long ostrich plumes nodded in time to their high stepping. Where, when, had we seen horses like these before? While we waited for the wedding party to come back from church, I remembered.

It was in Scotland just ten years ago this August, the season when Ben Marone puts on his imperial purple veil of heather, that we stood together outside the inn at Braemar waiting to see the royal carriage from Balmoral pass. Soon four, perfectly matched, cream-colored ponies—very like the King of Spain’s horses—came racing in sight at the top of their speed, drawing a large, plain, old-fashioned carriage. On the box sat a Highlander in tartan and filibegs.

“’Twull be the Queen and Princess Beatrice,” said one of the villagers.

The carriage came within our line of vision. “Ay, ’tis her Majesty.”

On the back seat sat an old woman in a shabby black cloak and bonnet, a younger lady in black beside her. The Queen was old and very tired of state and ceremony; she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but straight before her, as the villagers pulled forelock or curtsied. She seemed to be thinking deeply, was perhaps looking into the future. If she could have foreseen that her little granddaughter—the one for whose future she might have felt the most concern—would assume the name she had made illustrious, would she have been pleased?

“They will be coming back from church in a moment.” Patsy, whom we had not seen that morning, brought the news. “I saw them go into San Jeronimo’s. The bride wore a white dress like others I have seen, only longer; her veil was lace—not that flimsy stuff; it did not cover her face.” He was proud of having observed, and remembered so much.

Soon after we heard the joyous marriage music, and the long, glittering procession began to pass again, much in the same manner as before, only the Queen sat beside the King in the crystal and gold coach with the big crown on the top. As they passed through the Puerta del Sol they bowed and smiled to the people; their happy young faces were flushed with heat and excitement. When the coach had disappeared down the Calle Mayor I confessed my plan to the company.

“I am going to leave you, to slip round by the back streets to the Youngs’ house, opposite the palace. From their windows I can see the procession turn from the Calle Mayor into the palace yard and drive up to the door.”

“Do not let her go,” I heard Don Jaime say emphatically in Spanish; he added something that I did not hear.

“It will be very hot,” said Lucia.

“Ninety in the shade,” Patsy agreed. “One of us will have to go with you.”

“Luncheon is ready,” said our hostess.

“Iced melon in the hand is worth a good deal in the bush,” said J., “but of course I will take you if you really want to go.”

“It’s pretty jolly here,” murmured Patsy.

“Champagne?” whispered the waiter.

“Take at least a biscuit, and you must drink the bride’s health before you go,” said the prince of hosts.

It seemed too bad to break up the party. They were evidently serious about not letting me go alone. I yielded and stayed.

The restaurant was filling up with men in uniform and ladies in court dress who had come from the wedding; most of the people staying at the hotel were of the diplomatic world. At a table near us sat Mrs. Cartwright, looking as handsome in her white court dress as when Villegas painted her when she was a bride. At another table the King’s former tutor, SeÑor Merry del Val, a handsome, distinguished man (brother of the Cardinal), and his charming wife. It certainly was very jolly in that pleasant company, talking over the dresses, the coaches and the coming fÊtes.

If I had not stayed at the Hotel Paris, if I had gone to the Calle Mayor, I should have seen the gay procession of coaches, with the attendant postilions and palfreniers walking on either side, turn into the palace yard one by one, till there was only left in the Calle Mayor for the crowd to gape at the coche de respecto and the King’s coach. Then suddenly out of the heavens fall what at first looked like a great bouquet, not unlike those that had been showered down from window and balcony all along the route; then a blinding flash, a dreadful crash, a cloud of smoke; and when that cleared away the crystal coach shattered, the brave horses staggering on a pace or two, the King looking from the wrecked coach and crying:

“It is nothing; we are neither of us hurt.”

“Nothing?” But that is what King Umberto said, when he fell mortally stabbed at Monza.

The wheel horses reeled and fell, done to death, their shining sides, their white plumes all dabbled with blood. The King jumped out—his coat torn from his back—and helped out the bride. They were neither of them hurt, as he had said. The Queen was pale but wonderfully calm and brave,—till she looked down and saw the hem of her wedding dress covered with blood! Then through the distracted crowd, a small phalanx of resolute men pushed their way to the front, tall men in uniform, who surrounded the Queen, walked with her through the awful carnage down the Calle Mayor, across the palace yard to the door of her new home.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Some said they were the staff of the British Embassy, who had seen the accident from the Youngs’ windows; some that they were six tall life-guardsmen, who had played some part in the pageant. The important thing is, they were Englishmen; they and Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the English Ambassador, appeared, as if by magic, at the moment they were wanted.

No whisper of the tragedy reached the Paris. In the restaurant the gaily dressed people lingered at the tables, toasting the bride. Our party was one of the first to break up. A friend drove me to the Consulate, where finding the Consul had not returned, I waited to see him. He came in shortly, white as a ghost, and cried out for a glass of water. From Mr. Summers I heard the first account of the horror. He had seen the bodies of the innocent people killed by the bomb carried by. He had counted eight soldiers, seventeen civilians, all strangers to him. One he had known by sight, a little girl, the five-year-old daughter of a great house. He had seen her a few minutes before standing on a neighboring balcony with her parents. “Such a little body,” he said; “where the face had been, there was a twist of child’s curls, nothing more; the face was gone.”

What awful sights I had been spared! I carried the news home to the Tower. Villegas had not yet come back, the others had heard nothing.

Lucia clapped her hands to her heart when she heard of the outrage. “God grant,” she said with white lips, “that it was not an Italian who threw the bomb.” She is a Roman; her first fear, her first hope were for Italy.

“What was that thing Don Jaime said to you at the Paris, when I proposed going to the Youngs’ house?” I asked Patsy.

He said “Do not let her go; the police fear that a bomb will be thrown in the Calle Mayor.”

If the police knew so much, why could they not have averted the horror?

This was never explained.