Marcos followed his father through the crowd without replying.
There seemed nothing, indeed, to be said; nothing to be added to the simple observation that it was a humiliation for a man to have to admit in these days that he was a Spaniard.
"He was a Catalonian to the last," said Sarrion, when they were seated in their carnage. "He walked dying up his own stairs, so that his wife might be spared the sight of seeing him carried in. Stubborn and brave! One of the best men we have seen."
"And the king?"
"The king lands at Carthagena to-day--lands with his life in his hand. He carries it in his hand wherever he goes, day and night, in Spain, he and his wife. Without Prim he cannot hope to stand. But he will try. We must do what we can."
The carriage was making its careful way across the Puerta del Sol, which had been cleared by grape-shot more than once in Sarrion's recollection. It looked now as if only artillery could set order there.
"Viva el Rey! viva Don Carlos!" a loafer shouted, and waved his hat in Sarrion's grim and smiling face.
"I do not understand," he said to Marcos, as they passed on, "why the good God gives the Bourbons so many chances."
"I cannot understand why the Bourbons never take them," answered Marcos. For he was not a pushing man, but one of those patient waiters on opportunity who appear at length quietly at the top, and look down with thoughtful eyes at those who struggle below. The sweat and strife of some careers must tarnish the brightest lustre.
Father and son drove together to the apartment in a street high above the town, near the church of San José where the Sarrions lived when in Madrid, and there Sarrion gave Marcos further details of that strange adventure which Amedeo of Spain was about to begin.