ing the amount payable at any time. A small lever, with a metal
flag, bearing the words "for hire" stands upright upon it when the cab is
disengaged. As soon as a passenger enters the cab the lever is depressed by
the driver and the recording mechanism starts. At the end of the journey
the figures upon the dials show exactly the sum payable for hire; this sum
is based on a combination of time and distance.

CABAL (through the Fr. _cabale_ from the _Cabbala_ or _Kabbalah_, the
theosophical interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures), a private
organization or party engaged in secret intrigues, and applied also to the
intrigues themselves. The word came into common usage in English during the
reign of Charles II. to describe the committee of the privy council known
as the "Committee for Foreign Affairs," which developed into the cabinet.
The invidious meaning attached to the term was stereotyped by the
coincidence that the initial letters of the names of the five ministers,
Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale, who signed the
treaty of alliance with France in 1673, spelled cabal.

CABALLERO, FERNAN (1796-1877), the pseudonym adopted from the name of a
village in the province of Ciudad Real by the Spanish novelist Cecilia
Francisca Josefa Boehl de Faber y Larrea. Born at Morges in Switzerland on
the 24th of December 1796, she was the daughter of Johan Nikolas Boehl von
Faber, a Hamburg merchant, who lived long in Spain, married a native of
Cadiz, and is creditably known to students of Spanish literature as the
editor of the _Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas_ (1821-1825), and the
_Teatro espanol anterior a Lope de Vega_ (1832). Educated principally at
Hamburg, she visited Spain in 1815, and, unfortunately for herself, in 1816
married Antonio Planells y Bardaxi, an infantry captain of bad character.
In the following year Planells was killed in action, and in 1822 the young
widow married Francisco Ruiz del Arco, marques de Arco Hermoso, an officer
in one of the Spanish household regiments. Upon the death of Arco Hermoso
in 1835, the marquesa found herself in straitened circumstances, and in
less than two years she married Antonio Arron de Ayala, a man considerably
her junior. Arron was appointed consul in Australia, engaged in business
enterprises and made money; but unfortunate speculations drove him to
commit suicide in 1859. Ten years earlier the name of Fernan Caballero
became famous in Spain as the au