After his retirement from Spain, when the war had exhausted his resources, Don Carlos lived humbly and quietly at Paris.  He had ceased to love his wife and they led a miserable domestic life.  He would sell his war horse and fling the money to her on the bare table, telling her to buy bread with it.  Then his friends would buy the horse back again.  Once he disposed of the badge of the Order of Golden Fleece that had decorated the son of his illustrious ancestor, Charles V. The discreditable part of this action was not so much in the actual act of pawning as that he put the blame for it on an old general who had served him with fidelity for twenty years.  He claimed that the general had stolen it, imagining that the old soldier’s devotion to his interests would induce him to remain silent.  But the general at once told all of the facts in the case, and also told how Don Carlos had used the money to satisfy the demands of a notorious demi-mondaine.

His financial difficulties came to an end with the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Chambord, who bequeathed the larger part of their immense wealth to their favorite niece, wife of Don Carlos.  The duchess kept the money in her own hands, but gave him all he needed.  At her death she was quite as provident, leaving the money in trust for her children and giving only a small allowance to her husband, from whom she had lived apart for fifteen years.

Married A fortune.

This threw the pretender again into financial straits, for he has expensive tastes which require a large fortune to support.  So he looked around for a bride.  His followers were startled to hear of his marriage to the wealthy Princess Marie Berthe de Rohan.  The marriage took place April 29, 1894, and, although she was handsome and exceedingly rich and a member of the illustrious Rohan family, which alone of all the noble families of France and Austria has the privilege of calling the monarch cousin—­it was regarded as a mesalliance by all of the Carlists in Spain and legitimists everywhere.  They believed that Don Carlos should have not married any but the scion of a royal house.

By his first marriage Don Carlos had five children, among them Don Jaime, now in his twenty-eighth year, who is regarded as heir to the throne by the Carlists.  Don Jaime is said to possess to a high degree the strength of will and the determined character of his father.  He was educated in England and Austria, and is now serving in the Russian army.  Military science is his hobby, and he will be able to fight for his throne, as his father has done, if it becomes necessary.

Don Carlos is now in Switzerland, that home of the exiled from other lands, and where he spends his summers.  His winter residence is at the Palais de Loredane in Venice.

At the present date the Carlist party is one of the strongest political parties in Spain.  This does not appear in the representation in the Spanish cortes, for under the present system the right to exercise the franchise freely is a farce.