to her son that the King was not his father—­and this in the presence of that King and of Napoleon.  Could crime justify crime—­could the fiendish lusts and hatreds of a degenerate race offer any excuse for the deliberate guilt of a masculine genius, the conduct of this abject court might have apologised for the policy which it perhaps tempted the pampered ambition of Napoleon to commence, and which it now encouraged him to consummate by an act of suicidal violence.

Charles IV. resigned the Crown of Spain for himself and his heirs, accepting in return from the hands of Napoleon a safe retreat in Italy and a large pension.  Godoy, who had entered into the fatal negotiation of Fontainebleau, with the hope and the promise of an independent sovereignty carved out of the Portuguese dominions, was pensioned off in like manner, and ordered to partake the Italian exile of his patrons.  A few days afterwards, Ferdinand VII., being desired to choose at length between compliance and death, followed the example of his father, and executed a similar act of resignation.  Napoleon congratulated himself on having added Spain and the Indies to his empire, without any cost either of blood or of treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been achieved.  But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence of his worshippers.

Not that Napoleon had failed to measure from the beginning the mighty dangers which surrounded his audacious design.  He had been warned of them in the strongest manner by Talleyrand, and even by Fouche; nay, he had himself written to rebuke the headlong haste of Murat in occupying the Spanish capital—­to urge on him the necessity of conciliating the people, by preserving the show of respect for their national authorities and institutions—­to represent the imminent hazard of permitting the Duke del Infantado to strengthen and extend his party in Madrid—­and concluding with those ominous words:  Remember, if war breaks out, all is lost.

Ferdinand, before he left Madrid, invested a council of regency with the sovereign power, his uncle, Don Antonio, being president, and Murat one of the members.  Murat’s assumption of the authority thus conferred, the departure of Ferdinand, the liberation and departure of the detested Godoy, the flight of the old King—­these occurrences produced their natural effects on the popular mind.  A dark suspicion that France meditated the destruction of the national independence, began to spread; and, on the 2nd of May, when it transpired that preparations were making for the journey of Don Antonio also, the general rage at last burst out.  A crowd collected round the carriage meant, as they