vast palaces filled with
hordes of idle servants. The remnants from their lavish but poorly
served tables supported the crowds of beggars that thronged their
gates. Of social life they had little; they were gloomy, lonely, and
sullenly indifferent. In their stables stood herds of mules and hung
stores of gaudy trappings, but these were used only a few times each
year to convey the owners in proper dignity to the great public
functions.

On such a foundation stood the court: the King, generous-minded but
deceived, and jealously attached to the crown servants, impatient of
any annoyance, and always declaring a willingness to resign his
throne; the Queen, clear-headed and ambitious, but self-indulgent,
extravagant, and vicious; Godoy, the Prince of the Peace,--so called
from the treaty which he had negotiated at Basel to conclude the
French and Spanish revolutionary wars,--the real ruler, soothing the
King's sensibilities and gratifying the Queen's passions. To preserve
his ascendancy this trimmer had thrown in his lot with Napoleon; but,
faithless and perfidious, he would gladly have rejected that or any
other protection to fly to one he believed stronger. In any
centralized monarchy the administrative law is the backbone; in Spain
the administration was feeble and corrupt, for every member of it was
engaged in humbly imitating the example of its head, whose house was a
depot of plunder, whence toward the close of his career the spoils
were transferred on pack-mules by night, no one knew whither. It was
said, and many sober men believed it, that Godoy had all the wealth of
Spain.

Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, and heir apparent to the throne, was a
young widower of good impulses but feeble character. His deceased
wife, married in 1803, had been the daughter of Queen Caroline of
Naples; having quarreled with her mother-in-law, Louisa, she had died
prematurely, probably poisoned. The prince knew the scandals of his
father's household and the abuses of Godoy's administration, but
thought the bonds of degradation too strong to be stricken off by a
weak hand like his own. His followers, however, headed by the Duke del
Infantado and the ambitious Canon Escoiquiz, his former tutor, were
numerous and enlightened. They understood how hollow was the
protection vouchsafed by Napoleon to Godoy, and how faithless was the
pretended friendship of the latter for France. Their plan was that
Ferdinand should refuse the proffered hand