Strangely enough, the Queen’s Protestant upbringing, which prejudices the Ultramontanes so strongly against her, has just the opposite effect upon the people. They look upon her as being, like themselves, a victim of clericalist injustice, and so deep-rooted is the conviction that whatever the Jesuits object to must be good for the people, that the knowledge of their oppositions to the marriage would have been sufficient in itself to secure her a welcome from the proletariat. But her hold upon the masses goes deeper than this. The peasants appreciate, far more than many of the upper classes seem to do, the vital importance to the nation of a settled Dynasty and Constitution. They know that for many years the Monarchy hung on a thread, while the frail life of a little child was all that preserved Spain from the chaos that another conflict between Republicans, Carlists, and Monarchists would have produced. Therefore when King Alfonso grew up, married, and became the father of an heir to the throne, the rejoicing of the nation was heartfelt and sincere. The discussions which arose in 1905 on the death of the poor young Infanta Mercedes, the King’s eldest sister, as to whether her son was or was not entitled to be Prince of Asturias in the absence of a direct heir, had aroused all serious-minded Spaniards to the ever-present dangers that would take shape in action should King Alfonso die unmarried or childless. So that when the birth of the little Prince of Asturias--the first son born to a reigning King of Spain for over a century--was speedily followed by that of a second, the poor, always the worst sufferers from civil discord and changes of Government, learnt to look upon the young Queen who has given these hostages for peace to the nation, with a feeling compounded of admiration and affection. And each fresh child that comes to fill the royal nurseries seem a fresh bulwark to the State in the eyes of the working classes, who remember how their own flesh and blood were thrown to the dogs of war time after time by opposing forces during the century when Spain had either no King or no Crown Prince. THE REVIVAL OF CARLISM CHAPTER VII THE REVIVAL OF CARLISM For a long time past it has been assumed abroad that Carlism is dead in Spain, and probably few even among diplomatists in other countries could say off-book what the proscribed branch of the Spanish Bourbons now consists of, where the different members of the family live, and what relations they maintain with each other and with the country from which they have been exiled since 1876. Even so careful an observer as Major Martin Hume wrote in 1899 that Carlism as a political system was dead in Spain, and the absolutism upon which that party pin their faith, past revival.[12]