Among the beauties whom the hope of the young minister’s favour drew to Madrid from all parts of Spain, there was an unmarried lady of the name of Tudó, a native of Malaga, whose charms both of person and mind would have captivated a much less susceptible heart than Godoy’s. From the moment she was presented by her parents, La Tudó (we are perfectly unceremonious in naming ladies of all ranks) obtained so decided a supremacy above the numerous sharers in the favourite’s love, that the Queen, who had hitherto overlooked a crowd of occasional rivals, set her face against an attachment which bid fair to last for life. It had, indeed, subsisted long enough to produce unquestionable proof of the nature of the intimacy, in a child whose birth, though not blazoned forth as if sanctioned by public opinion, was not hidden with any consciousness of shame. A report being circulated at court, that the Prince of the Peace was secretly married to La Tudó, the Queen, in a fit of jealousy, accused him to the King as guilty of ingratitude, in thus having allied himself to a woman of no birth, without the slightest mark of deference to his royal benefactors. The King, whose fondness for Godoy had grown above his wife’s control, seemed inclined to discredit the story of the marriage; but, being at that time at one of the royal country residences called _Sitios_--the _Escurial_, I believe, where the ministers have apartments within the palace; the Queen led her husband through a secret passage, to a room where they surprised the lovers taking their supper in a comfortable _tête-à-tête_. The feelings excited by this sight must have been so different in each of the royal couple, that one can scarcely feel surprised at the strangeness of the result. Godoy had only to deny the marriage to pacify the King, whose good nature was ready to make allowances for a mere love-intrigue of his favourite. The Queen, hopeless of ever being the exclusive object of the gallantries of a man to whom she was chained by the blindest infatuation, probably feared lest the step she had taken should tear him away from her presence. A slave to her vehement passions, and a perfect stranger to those delicate feelings which vice itself cannot smother in some hearts, she seemed satisfied with preventing her chief rival from rising above her own rank of a mistress; and, provided the place was occupied by one to whom her paramour was indifferent, wished to see him married, and be herself the match-maker.