Previously to Christina's expulsion from the Regency in the year 1840, little was seen or known of her children by Muñoz. During her three years' residence at Paris, a similar silence and mystery was observed respecting them, and they lived retired in a country-house near Vevay, upon the Lake of Geneva, whither those born in the French capital were also dispatched. This prudent reserve is now at an end, and the grandchildren of the Tarançon tobacconist sit around, almost on a level with, the throne of the Spanish Queen. Titles are showered upon them, cringing courtiers wait upon their nod, and the once proud and powerful grandees of Spain, descendants of the haughty warriors who drove the Saracens from Iberian soil, and stood covered in the presence of the Fifth Charles, adulate the illegitimate progeny of a Muñoz and a Christina. Subtile have been the calculations, countless the intrigues, shameful the misdeeds that have led to this result, so much desired by parents of the ennobled bastards, so undesirable for the honour and dignity of Spain. It is obvious that, with the immense wealth, whose acquisition has been already explained, Christina would have had no difficulty in portioning off her half-score children, and enabling them to live rich and independent in a foreign county. But this arrangement did not suit her views; still less did it accord with those of the Duke of Rianzares. He founded his objections upon a patriotic pretext. He wished his children, he said, to be Spanish citizens, not aliens--to hold property in their own country--to live respected in Spain, and not as exiles in a foreign land. It may be supposed there was no obstacle to their so doing, and that in Spain, as elsewhere, they could reckon at least upon that amount of ease and consideration which money can give. But here came the sticking-point, the grand difficulty, only to be got over by grand means and great ingenuity. Christina had been the guardian of the Queen and Infanta during their long minority: guardians, upon the expiration of their trust, are expected to render accounts; and this the mother of Isabel was wholly unprepared to do, in such a manner as would enable her to retain the plunder accumulated during the period of her guardianship. She had certainly the option of declining to render any--of taking herself and her wealth, her husband and her children, out of Spain, and of living luxuriously elsewhere. But it has already been seen, that neither she nor Muñoz liked the prospect of such banishment, however magnificent and numerous the appliances brought by wealth to render it endurable. What, then, was to be done? It was quite positive that the husbands of the Queen and Infanta would demand accounts of their wives' fortune and of its management during their minority. How were their demands to be met--how such difficulties got over? It was hard to say. The position resembled what the Yankees call a "fix." The