For Goya’s role at Court was that of an audacious satirist, censor and chastiser of the follies and iniquities of his day. He was allowed a free hand, for his gallantry endeared him to the ladies and his prowess as a fighter made him feared by the men, while all, except the immediate victim, could enjoy the adroitness and daring of his humor. His particular _bête noir_ was Godoy, whom he mercilessly satirised. He would amuse the idle moments of the Court by sprinkling the contents of a sandbox on the writing table, and drawing with his finger caricatures of the minister. On one occasion he appeared at some function during a period of Court mourning and was refused admission by the ushers, because he was wearing white stockings. He retired to an ante-room and with pen and ink relieved their whiteness with funereal caricatures of Godoy. Among the amours in which he indulged was one with the young Duchess of Alba, who returned his passion. Their liaison aroused the jealousy of the Queen, who banished the Duchess to her country home. When Goya learned of it he pursued his inamorata in hot haste and caught her up on the road, for an axle of her carriage had broken. There being no smithy near, he himself lit a fire and repaired the damage. The exertion was succeeded by a chill, which induced the first symptoms of the deafness that in later life became complete. Meanwhile, the Court could not do without its Goya, and as he would not return without his Duchess, she too was recalled. But Goya was far from being a mere buffoon and galliard. Although his passionate nature with its streak of coarseness made him at home in the petty intrigues of the court, he was a part of the wide-spread revolutionary spirit of his day. While Europe, and particularly France, was seething with the yeast of unrest, this solitary figure, far off in Spain, was already in revolt. In his denunciation of the hypocrisy and vice of his age, as exhibited alike in the Church, Society and the middle and lower classes, he was a Voltaire and Robespierre in one, brandishing the torch that subsequently kindled the French revolution. In this, as in his technique, he was ahead of his age. Meanwhile, the mental attitude which inspired him was characteristically Spanish: by turns grim and gay, humorous and deadly serious, coarse, sensual and cruel. In two series of etchings, _Caprichos_ (Whims) and _Proverbios_ (Proverbs), the scourge of his satire bit into the plates with a virulence of scorn and nakedness of exposure that have never been surpassed and, before his day, had never been attempted by an artist. In one of his etchings, a dead man has returned to life and is writing with his finger on the wall _nada--nothing_. Goya was a nihilist, bitter therefore against quacks and empirics, whether priests, doctors or lawyers. Also he laid bare the emptiness and horror of passion, a hashish that beguiles forgetfulness and leads to impotence and nothingness.