In the capital we were comparatively safe. Unless the garrison divided against itself or the ordinary troops and the Guardia Civil fell out, there was no danger of bloodshed in any quantity. The population is not singularly ferocious. The privates move quietly in the streets in pairs, and are particular to salute their officers, though there is one officer, on an average, to every fifteen men, and most of these officers lack the thoroughbred air of gentlemen, and apparently have risen from a low social level. The sergeants are self-controlled, and brighten the promenades with their green worsted gloves and the great laced V's on their sleeves. I never miss a chance of admiring the garrison at parade. Physically the men are up to a high standard--superior to those of most European armies; morally they have the name of being patient and well-conducted; in formation they are steady, in dressing precise, and in movement they have a step as quick, but more _dégagé_ than the Prussians. Were I a Spaniard, I would, every time I bent in prayer, offer up a supplication for the conversion--or perhaps the something else--of the bedizened culprits who are sending the soldiers to rack and ruin. CHAPTER XII. Luring the Reader into a Stony Desert--A Duel on the Carpet--Disappointment of the Special Correspondents--The People Amuses Itself--How the Ballot Works--A Historic Sitting of the Congress--Castelar's Great Oration--The Glory of Spain--About Negro Manumission--Distrust of "Uncle Sam"--Return of Figueras--The Permanent Committee--A Love-Feast of Politicians--The Writer Orders Wings. It may be urged with some show of truth that under the mirage of the adventurous, I have lured the reader, anxious for the sensational, into exhausting deviations in the stony desert of politics. I am guilty, and I am sorry that I shall have to sin again--politics are so ultimately interwoven with life in Spain. But it must not be imagined that these accounts of what happened more than a decade ago are no more useful or interesting than the stale report of the death of Queen Anne. In Spain history has the trick of literally repeating itself. The country is split into the same camps still, and occurrences similar to those of which I treat are certain to be presented to the world anew. The drama will be the same; the company only will be strange. And the information, such as it is, which I give now, may furnish the key to much that would otherwise be hard to unlock when the curtain rings up again.