1864-1868 On November 28, 1857, “the birth of Alfonso XII.,” as Martin Hume says, “added another thong to the whip which the King-Consort could hold over the Queen for his personal and political ends, and it also had the apparently incongruous effect of sending Captain Puig Moltó into exile.” Of course there were the usual rejoicings at the birth of a Prince, but things were far from satisfactory at the Court. The Queen had now a taste of personal power and a higher notion of her own political ability. The Congress was in slavish servitude to the palace, and, acting in accordance with this sentiment, it had managed to get rid of the men in the Senate who had been working for the constitutional privileges of the country which would have led to the indispensable protection of the prerogative of a true suffrage; and freed from these patriots, the press was silenced and Parliament was suspended. The return of Maria Cristina, the Queen’s mother, was another step which added to the unpopularity of Isabella II. Once more wearied out with waiting for the realization of constitutional rights, the people’s exasperation was voiced by the soldiers at the barracks of San Gil, within view of the royal palace of Madrid. O’Donnell at once took steps for the suppression of the insurrection. The cries of “Viva Prim!” “Viva la Libertad!” showed that the spirit of republicanism was rampant. Swiftly as O’Donnell went to the scene of action, Narvaez was before him, and so the Prime Minister had the mortification of seeing his rival carried into the palace to be tended for the slight wound he had received in the conflict. The rebellion was soon quelled, and the insurgents were shot; but disinterested advisers of the Queen might have shown her that such _émeutes_ proved that the fire of discontent was smouldering, and with a strong Government for the constitutional rights for which the country was clamouring the revolution of 1868 would have been avoided. On the day following the San Gil insurrection a man of influence at the Court went to plead pardon for two of the insurgents from Her Majesty herself. The interview was characteristic of the kind-heartedness of the Queen. After waiting for half an hour in the antechamber, the gentleman was shown into the royal presence. “You have been quite lost,” said Isabel graciously, as her visitor bent over her hand. “It is a thousand years since you have been to see me.” Whilst excusing himself with courtly grace, Tarfe noticed that during the two years in which he had been absent from the palace the Queen had grown much stouter, and had thus lost some of her queenly dignity. She seemed distrait and troubled, and the red lids of her limpid blue eyes gave her an expression of weariness. They were, moreover, the eyes of a woman who had been brought in contact with the encyclopædic array of the various forms of the despoilers of innocence.