e than once made him
overtures of increased salary to get him away from the Conde de Rios;
but Merelo, with fidelity that could not be too highly praised (and
therefore he did not cease to praise it), had remained firm in his
resistance to all temptations.

There was no one his equal in covering in a moment a dozen groups, in
finding out what they were talking about, what they had been talking
about, and what they were going to talk about, in gliding between the
deputies' feet and discovering the most inviolate and carefully guarded
secrets of politics, in worrying foreign envoys with questions;
audaciously approaching the ministers, in tormenting the subordinates,
and in "cutting out of every one whatever he had in his body," sometimes
by suavity, at others by force.

Really Merelo y Garcia was in Spain the pioneer of that pleiad of young
reporters who, at the present day, make our press so illustrious; he it
was who draughted the first lineaments of bills in the forms of
questions and answers, though they afterward appeared so much changed.
Still, in Merelo's time, they were as yet, as it were, in swaddling
clothes, and Chinese and Moorish ambassadors did not answer in such a
precise and categorical manner as they do now, when the reporters ask
them, for example "How long were you on your journey? Were you able to
get any sleep?" etc., etc.

Merelo was thus better known than the postman in all official centres
and more feared than the cholera. When he made up his mind to find out
about anything, neither sour faces nor rude replies could daunt him; he
was proof against all rebuffs. It was told of him that one time when the
Minister of State had just come out from a very important diplomatic
meeting, Merelo met him with the question:--

"How now, Senor F----? is the matter of the treaty settled or not?"

The minister looked at him with curiosity, and asked:--

"What journal are you editor of?"

"Of _La Independencia_," replied Merelo, with a genial smile.

"I might have known it by the impudence which you show," retorted the
minister coolly, turning on his heel.

The General Count de Rios used to tell at his receptions, with the tears
of delight, of one famous exploit which Merelo's especial gifts had
allowed him to accomplish.

He was at his favorite post of observation, like a watch-dog, at one of
the doors of the _salon de conferencias_; he had been for some time on
the scent for news, when he happened to