As for Don Carlos Evaña, his thoughts were ever in the future, but his hopes, his fears, and his projects he kept all to himself, working continually with one object steadily in view, the overthrow of Spanish rule, but working in a way which appeared to none to be work. His estancia he but once visited all that spring, and then his visit was a short one, nearly all his time he spent in the city. Don Cornelio Saavedra, Colonel of the Patricios, offered him a commission in the first battalion, the command of the company formerly led by Don Isidro Lorea, which he declined, yet he practised fencing every day, and those of his books which treated of the art of war were those most frequently studied by him. One battalion of the Patricios was known as that of the "Pardos y Morenos," being composed entirely of men of colour, liberated slaves, or the descendants of freedmen. At the headquarters of this battalion Evaña was a frequent visitor. Don Cornelio Saavedra met him there one day and asked him somewhat scornfully whether he would prefer a commission in this regiment to one in the _corps d'elite_, but to him Evaña answered that as _yet_ he had no wish to enter any regiment. Don Cornelio noticed the accent on the word "yet," and replied: "It would be difficult for even a philosopher to understand you, Don Carlos; for me, I confess that I understand you not at all." But the free negroes and mulattos understood something about Don Carlos, of which Don Cornelio knew nothing, which was, that if they required favour or assistance in any way, none was so ready to help them as Don Carlos Evaña, and that the only way in which they could repay him for any such service was to repeat to him all the tittle-tattle and gossip they could collect among their women-folk concerning the saying and doings of certain of the chief men of the city who were Spaniards. * * * * * Don Manuel Belgrano entered eagerly into a secret correspondence with certain confidential friends of the Princess Carlota; despatched missives to trusty friends of his own throughout the provinces, advocating her claims; and kept alive the zeal of her friends in the city by frequent secret conferences, which were held in the guise of dinner-parties, or of excursions into the country, so baulking the vigilance of Don Roderigo, or of any others unfriendly to the project. So passed with him the spring very harmlessly, but his enthusiasm greatly subsided as he learnt that even American air could not liberalize a Bourbon of the royal house of Spain. * * * * *