Prim alone stood firm: "_Jamas, jamas!_" (Never, never!) he replied to every suggestion to bring Montpensier forward. In those words he signed his own death-warrant. His actual murderers were never brought to justice, ostensibly were never found; but there never was a Spaniard who doubted that the foul deed was the result of instigation. [Illustration: IN THE WOODS AT LA GRANJA] To have Mercédes as Queen Consort, was to bring her father once more within the limits of practical interference with national politics. To all remonstrance, however, the young King had one answer: "I have promised," and the nation, recognising that as a perfectly valid argument, acquiesced, though with many forebodings. The marriage took place, and within a few months the girl Queen was carried with her unborn child to the melancholy Pantéon de los Principes at the Escorial. The marriage of the Infanta Isabel with Count Girgenti, a Neapolitan Bourbon, was an unhappy one, and she obtained a legal separation from him after a very short matrimonial life. Spaniards have a perfect genius for giving apt nicknames. Scarcely was the arrangement for the marriage made known when the Count's name was changed to that of _Indecente_. He fought, however, for Isabel II. at Alcoléa, which was at any rate acting more decently than did Montpensier, who had furnished large sums of money to promote the rising against his confiding sister-in-law, and, in fact, never ceased his machinations against every person and every thing that stood in his way, until death fortunately removed him from the arena of Spanish politics, his one overmastering ambition unfulfilled. He had neither managed to ascend the throne himself, nor see any of his children seated there, except for the few months that Mercédes, "beloved of the King and of the nation," shared the throne of Alfonso XII. The Infanta Isabel, except for the episode of her exile in France, has always lived in the Royal Palace of Madrid, having her own quarters, and her little court about her. At times she has been the butt of much popular criticism, and even dislike, but she has outlived it all, and is now the most popular woman in Spain. It must have required no common qualities to have lived without discord--as a separated wife--with her brother and her younger sisters; then with Queen Mercédes, her cousin as well as sister-in-law; again, during the time of the King's widowhood and her own elevation to the rank of Princess of Asturias, and, finally, since the second marriage of her brother, and his untimely death, with Maria Cristina and her young nephew and nieces.