Before we leave this favourite home of His Catholic Majesty it is worth while to recall a few of the events of which it has been the theatre. On the 17th September 1832, Ferdinand VII. lay here dying. All those round him--his family, his ministers, even the garrison--were devoted to the interests of Don Carlos, and even his confessor ceased not to importune the dying king to revoke the Pragmatic Sanction and to decree the exclusion of his own infant daughter from the throne. Queen Cristina, in the face of such pressure, remained inactive and despairing. With his hand guided, it is said, by the Bishop of Leon, Ferdinand at last traced his feeble signature to the decree which disinherited his child. The triumph of the Carlist faction seemed complete. Suddenly at the doors of the palace appeared the Queen’s sister, Doña Luisa Carlota, a woman of such spirit that no one there--minister or officer or prelate--dared bar her way to the King’s bedside. The court presently resounded with her shrill denunciations of the Queen’s want of courage, of the King’s weakness. She summoned to her presence the trembling minister, Calomarde, and when he offered his hand, struck him on the face. “White hands do not wound” stammered the statesman and fled from the presence of the royal mænad. Before such a tempest of righteous indignation, intriguers and schemers retired. Force at the last can always break through the meshes of treachery. Many of those who witnessed the memorable scene must have thought of the furious bull at Madrid which bore down before it the most dexterous of banderilleros, the bravest of espadas, and breaking over the barriers, dispersed a whole population. Before nightfall the decree was revoked and the succession of the Infanta Isabella confirmed anew by royal decree. Bravo Luisa Carlota! Four years later, Cristina, now regent, had to face alone and unprotected, a mob headed by the palace guard, which broke into her room, loudly demanding the re-establishment of the Constitution of 1812. The Queen, unmoved and tactful, asked the deputation if they knew what the constitution was. According to the Honourable John Hay (see his “Castilian Days”) they replied, “No, but we hear it is a good thing, and will make salt cheaper.” The story like most good ones, is certainly untrue, and may be classed with the legend that in 1893 when there was an agitation in Belgium for an extended franchise, some peasant women presented themselves at the Town Hall with buckets to carry away their share of the “Suffrage!”