The joke of it was that the Blankblankblank is a well-known café chantant in Seville which has been for years a stone of offence to Mrs. Grundy, both the English and the Spanish variety, and well-behaved members of society like ourselves would not have set foot inside it for worlds. Of course our disapproval, even if they had been aware of it, would not have troubled the café chantant people at all, but we felt rather as if those black sheep were heaping coals of fire on our respectable heads, when we learned that songs about our civic virtues were delighting crowded houses every night. But at any rate we were in good company, with the King on one side and the parish priest on the other.
And thus on a note of comedy closed our part in the tragedy of the greatest floods ever known in the long annals of the devastation wrought century after century by the Guadalquivir.
PART IV.—SPRING
CHAPTER XVI
Popular monarchs—King Alfonso and the washerwoman—Royal charity—No bull-fight required—Reaction against the bull-ring—A monarchical republican—The guardian of the polo ground—The King introduces the Queen—A loyal old gardener—The grief of Enriqueta—The King at Ronda—A lucky donkey-driver—Careful rioters—Viva el Rey!
I am often asked by visitors whether the English Queen is popular in Spain, and I always wonder why such a question should occur to them. How could she fail to be popular, with youth, beauty, and a kind heart to give an extra gilding to her crown?
As a matter of fact, the longer one lives in Spain and the more one sees of the peasantry and the working classes in general, the more delightful tales one hears of the private dealings of the King and Queen and the rest of the royal family with the “common” people; and as very few of these have been published in the English papers, it seems worth while to put them on record before they are forgotten. I do not vouch for their literal truth, but I hardly think such stories would be current coin unless they had some foundation in fact, and in any case the people believe them to be true, and thus they illustrate the popular feeling towards the Royalties.
