The stream of pleasure was in its full force and flow when a strange murmur followed by a succession of slight screams arrested the attention of the merrymakers. Faces were turned inquiringly towards the point whence the sounds came; the faces grew serious as a carriage was noticed breaking from the ranks and driving smartly down a side-street, they were overspread with alarm as other carriages filed off, and then, quick as a cloud overcasts the sun, a curtain of gloom fell upon the moving multitude. There was a halt as if by general consent, a dead silence, a thrill of trepidation, and a rapid rush and scurry hither and thither to shelter. Trailing skirts were caught up, vizors were thrown aside, grey-bearded patriarchs tore off their wigs and spectacles, the fiddling and singing came to an abrupt ending, and were replaced by curses and shrieks; all order and courtesy were cast to the four winds of heaven. It was a perfect tragi-comedy; a mixture of the terrible, the risible, the ominous, the rococo. I never saw transformation so sharp. It was as if there was no room for any less ignoble feeling in the lately jocose, bantering throngs than self-preservation. Drivers lashed their horses and mules and galloped off furiously; equestrians careered towards all points of the compass; those on foot bolted into every hall-way that stood ajar, or disappeared down the nearest openings; shrubs and flowers were trampled upon, and in a span shorter than it takes to recount it, the avenue of the Prado was a desert. It was fierce wholesale scamper and stampede. The roadway and parks were strewn with fans, masks, pocket-handkerchiefs, gloves and slippers; the entire company of masquerading Arabs, Prussian officers, Morris dancers, Inquisitors, and troubadours had taken incontinent flight, most of them breathless and white; the ladies in their varied characters of gipsies, grisettes, Galician nurses, and Court coquettes had all scudded off in such a dismayed flutter that they had forgotten to swoon, and forfeited the finest of opportunities of breaking into hysterics. They were really frightened. I sought refuge (from what I knew not, whether earthquake, hurricane or revolution) in a thick clump of bushes at the side of the Paseo, where I stumbled over a panting make-believe toreador, and a curious wire-woven article of ladies' dress, which latter I appropriated as trophy. By-and-by, as no fresh cry of alarm was raised, the bull-fighter crawled out, and I took heart of grace to return to the centre of the town, where I learned that the scare was groundless. It had its origin in the glitter of the bayonets of some soldiers returning from their duties at the Palace of the Congress. Madrid was timid as a sick girl. It struck me that if there had been genuine cause for the panic, and that a charge had been made or a volley with lead fired, there would have been unequalled scope for a picture of the type of