Nobody dreamt of trying to sleep again for the remainder of that night, so Madame Hugo and the three officers spent it together, and next morning, at daybreak, they continued their march.
The following day, another scene almost as grotesque as the alarming incident of the previous night, was in preparation for the travellers, under the rays of the hot noontide sun. They were halting at that hour in the middle of a great plain. The soldiers were covered with dust, and streaming with perspiration, under a sun of 35 degrees Centigrade, having finished their meal, when a courier arrived for the Duc de Cotadilla, to announce that the queen, who was also on her way under an escort to rejoin her husband, would soon pass by the cortège. The Duc de Cotadilla thanked the courier for his information and, when he had learnt the time that they were likely to meet the queen, and found they could still count on nearly an hour, he sent the courier on his way. Then he went to the door of Madame Hugo's coach, where, we know, he was accustomed to hold converse.
"Madame," he said, "I venture to ask you to lower your blinds, first on account of the sun, and next because of the sights you would see going on among the escort. The queen is going to pass by in an hour's time, and I desire to show her due deference by making my men dress themselves in parade attire; and, to do this, they will have to change everything, from their collars to their leggings. During this transformation, which will be even more extensive than I have described, there will be evolutions which may be all right for a general or a colonel to see, but which are more unseemly for a lady to look upon. I have warned you, madame, and I am now going to warn the Duchesse de Villa-Hermosa and the other ladies."
And, with his usual politeness, the Duc de Cotadilla took leave of Madame Hugo and issued his commands. Madame Hugo drew down her blinds.
The orders of the Duc de Cotadilla were that the men should at once put on parade dress to line the route for the queen. The men quickly formed single line along the whole of the roadside, piled arms, opened knapsacks and began their toilet. They had just reached the most delicate part of their toilet, on account of which the Duc de Cotadilla had cautioned the ladies to lower their carriage blinds, when a huge cloud of dust appeared on the top of a mountain five hundred feet off, and cries of "The queen! The queen!" rang through the air. The queen had come half an hour sooner than the courier had announced. A stronger head than that of the Duc de Cotadilla might have been upset by such an accident as this; moreover, in no book on the art of warfare had provision been made for such a contingency. So he kept silence, and, left to their own inspiration, the drums beat the call to arms, the soldiers shouldered their weapons and the non-commissioned officers yelled, "Fall in!"
Thus it fell ont that the Queen of Spain held a review such as no other queen or empress, were she even Marguerite of Burgundy or Catherine II., had ever held; and, as she learnt later that M. de Cotadilla had been forewarned of her arrival, nothing removed the idea from her mind that the nakedness of those three thousand men was a joke which the illustrious duke had prepared for her.
The queen went by, and, as the parade dress was of no further use, they resumed their everyday uniform, restored their fine clothes to their knapsacks, the signal for starting was given and the journey was resumed.
[1] Translator's note.—Spanish leader of a mule-team.
[2] Young shepherds.