“How has he managed to get ill just now?” I asked, for he was a sturdy old fellow whom no amount of work ever seemed to tire.
“It is because he has been up for several nights, keeping guard over there,” explained his daughter. “The Town Council put on two extra policemen, but my father thought they were not enough to make sure that no bad characters got in in the dark, for it is a long piece of road as you see, and he was not going to have bad characters in His Majesty’s garden if he could help it.”
“Well done, Toro,” said I; “I know how loyal he is to the King, and I hope he will get a handsome tip for his extra care.”
“Oh no, he didn’t do it for that, it is purely voluntary; and anyhow he won’t get anything, because the Señor Marqués (the Governor of the Alcazar) doesn’t know anything about it. You may be sure my father is not going to tell him. And please, Doña Elena, don’t say anything to my father about it, for he would be angry with me for telling you. He feels he is only doing his duty.”
One admires the King whose kindness to his employés secures such unselfish affection, and one admires the high ideal of duty which leads an old man nearer seventy than sixty to stop out of doors all night for a week at a stretch to guard his royal master’s garden. I do not know if Toro’s devotion ever reached the King’s ears, but I fear not, for the last time I saw chubby Enriqueta she was in tears because, owing to extensive alterations in that same garden, the house she and her father had lived in for so many years was to be pulled down and they had to seek a new abode outside of the precincts.
She cheered up, however, as I led her back to talk about the royal family, always her favourite subject of conversation.
She adores the little Prince of Asturias, and related with pride how she had long ago heard him talking in English to his pony. “He was hardly four years old, and yet he could already talk in a language I did not understand!”
But her most cherished recollection relates to a day of alarms and excursions when, owing to some political crisis, the Court left Seville at a few hours’ notice, a day or two earlier than had been intended.
“I have never been employed inside the palace,” said Enriqueta, “only to wash table linen and such-like here in our own laundry. But that day every one was so busy that we were all called to help with the packing. There are certain things that the Queen herself directs the packing of, and one of her ladies told me to carry a tray of silver and spoke rather sharply because I was slow with it, being unused to such delicate work. And a voice behind said in the kindest tone, ‘Don’t scold the poor girl; I am sure she is doing her best.’ And there was the Queen herself, who had come to see if the silver was ready! We would all go down on our knees to serve their Majesties, who have kind words for everybody, and it is a deep grief to me that when we live away from the palace I shall have no chance of serving the Queen even by washing her table linen.”
I heard a pleasant story of the King at Ronda, which he visited a year or so ago on his way from a military review at Algeciras.