currying favour with the King-consort, and with a less legitimate influence at court. There was to be a bullfight on the afternoon of Monday the 17th July—the first fight that had been permitted since O’Donnell’s insurrection; and it became known in the morning that Cordova and his friends intended getting up a small _emeute_ or demonstration, when, between seven and eight o’clock, the streets should be thronged with the ten or twelve thousand spectators issuing forth from the bull-ring. The intention of this was doubtless twofold—to let off a little of the popular steam, and to give an air of popularity to the incoming ministry. But Cordova and his advisers had not sufficiently felt the pulse of the people, or duly estimated the possible results of so imprudent a manifestation. It was like exploding fireworks in a powder-magazine; and the moment selected made the trick still more hazardous. On the sultry evening of a burning July day, when several thousand men of the middle and lower classes should just have quitted the spectacle which excites them to the utmost, and habituates them to bloodshed, to raise, in the streets of Madrid, even the simulacre of a riotous banner, and that at a time when the people were galled by a long period of oppression and misrule, and when an insurrectionary army was in the field, was surely an act of as self-destructive madness as ever a doomed and blinded man was afflicted with. Early in the day, one or two leaders of the liberal party in Madrid had spoken to me of the proposed demonstration, and had intimated their intention of being on the watch to improve it, should circumstances turn favourably for their views. Evening came, and the bullfight took place; after it, as usual, the streets were crowded, especially the Puerta del Sol and adjacent thoroughfares. It was about eight o’clock when the first symptoms of disturbance were apparent. Numerous groups were formed in the streets, and parties of men marched through them at a rapid pace, shouting _vivas_ for liberty, and down with the ministry. The resignation of the ministry, I must observe, had not yet been officially published, but it was well known to have been accepted, and that, as far as the cabinet went, Spain was in an interregnum. This was the moment chosen by General Cordova for the farce which was to prove a tragedy. I was reminded, as I watched the proceedings of the night, of the Italian robber story, in which a party of practical jokers, and very _mauvais plaisants_, having gone out with corked faces and leadless pistols to frighten some friends abroad on a pic-nic, suddenly find amongst them the chocolate visages, fierce whiskers, and blunderbusses charged to the muzzle of the genuine brigand and his band, and heartily deplore the sorry plight in which their folly has put them. So it was in Madrid on the 17th July.