“Not yet, Don Jorge,” said the little soldier-tailor; “not yet; the scoundrels still hold out, relying on the brute bull Quesada and a few infantry, who still continue true to them; but there is no fear, Don Jorge; the queen is ours, thanks to the courage of my friend Garcia, and if the brute bull should make his appearance—­ ho! ho!  Don Jorge, you shall see something—­I am prepared for him, ho! ho!” and thereupon he half opened his great coat, and showed me a small gun, which he bore beneath it in a sling, and then moving away with a wink and a nod, disappeared amongst the crowd.

Presently I perceived a small body of soldiers advancing up the Calle Mayor, or principal street which runs from the Puerta del Sol in the direction of the palace; they might be about twenty in number, and an officer marched at their head with a drawn sword; the men appeared to have been collected in a hurry, many of them being in fatigue dress, with foraging caps on their heads.  On they came, slowly marching; neither their officer nor themselves paying the slightest attention to the cries of the crowd which thronged about them, shouting “Long live the constitution!” save and except by an occasional surly side glance:  on they marched with contracted brows and set teeth, till they came in front of the cavalry, where they halted and drew up in a rank.

“Those men mean mischief,” said I to my friend D-, of the Morning Chronicle, who at this moment joined me; “and depend upon it, that if they are ordered they will commence firing, caring nothing whom they hit,—­but what can those cavalry fellows behind them mean, who are evidently of the other opinion by their shouting, why don’t they charge at once this handful of foot people and overturn them?  Once down, the crowd would wrest from them their muskets in a moment.  You are a liberal, which I am not; why do you not go to that silly young man who commands the horse and give him a word of counsel in time?”

D—­turned upon me his broad red good-humoured English countenance, with a peculiarly arch look, as much as to say—­(whatever you think most applicable, gentle reader), then taking me by the arm, “Let us get,” said he, “out of this crowd and mount to some window, where I can write down what is about to take place, for I agree with you that mischief is meant.”  Just opposite the post office was a large house, in the topmost story of which we beheld a paper displayed, importing that apartments were to let; whereupon we instantly ascended the common stair, and having agreed with the mistress of the etage for the use of the front room for the day, we bolted the door, and the reporter, producing his pocket-book and pencil, prepared to take notes of the coming events, which were already casting their shadow before.