“Take at least a biscuit, and you must drink the bride’s health before you go,” said the prince of hosts.
It seemed too bad to break up the party. They were evidently serious about not letting me go alone. I yielded and stayed.
The restaurant was filling up with men in uniform and ladies in court dress who had come from the wedding; most of the people staying at the hotel were of the diplomatic world. At a table near us sat Mrs. Cartwright, looking as handsome in her white court dress as when Villegas painted her when she was a bride. At another table the King’s former tutor, Señor Merry del Val, a handsome, distinguished man (brother of the Cardinal), and his charming wife. It certainly was very jolly in that pleasant company, talking over the dresses, the coaches and the coming fêtes.
If I had not stayed at the Hotel Paris, if I had gone to the Calle Mayor, I should have seen the gay procession of coaches, with the attendant postilions and palfreniers walking on either side, turn into the palace yard one by one, till there was only left in the Calle Mayor for the crowd to gape at the coche de respecto and the King’s coach. Then suddenly out of the heavens fall what at first looked like a great bouquet, not unlike those that had been showered down from window and balcony all along the route; then a blinding flash, a dreadful crash, a cloud of smoke; and when that cleared away the crystal coach shattered, the brave horses staggering on a pace or two, the King looking from the wrecked coach and crying:
“It is nothing; we are neither of us hurt.”
“Nothing?” But that is what King Umberto said, when he fell mortally stabbed at Monza.
The wheel horses reeled and fell, done to death, their shining sides, their white plumes all dabbled with blood. The King jumped out—his coat torn from his back—and helped out the bride. They were neither of them hurt, as he had said. The Queen was pale but wonderfully calm and brave,—till she looked down and saw the hem of her wedding dress covered with blood! Then through the distracted crowd, a small phalanx of resolute men pushed their way to the front, tall men in uniform, who surrounded the Queen, walked with her through the awful carnage down the Calle Mayor, across the palace yard to the door of her new home.
Who were they? Where did they come from? Some said they were the staff of the British Embassy, who had seen the accident from the Youngs’ windows; some that they were six tall life-guardsmen, who had played some part in the pageant. The important thing is, they were Englishmen; they and Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the English Ambassador, appeared, as if by magic, at the moment they were wanted.
No whisper of the tragedy reached the Paris. In the restaurant the gaily dressed people lingered at the tables, toasting the bride. Our party was one of the first to break up. A friend drove me to the Consulate, where finding the Consul had not returned, I waited to see him. He came in shortly, white as a ghost, and cried out for a glass of water. From Mr. Summers I heard the first account of the horror. He had seen the bodies of the innocent people killed by the bomb carried by. He had counted eight soldiers, seventeen civilians, all strangers to him. One he had known by sight, a little girl, the five-year-old daughter of a great house. He had seen her a few minutes before standing on a neighboring balcony with her parents. “Such a little body,” he said; “where the face had been, there was a twist of child’s curls, nothing more; the face was gone.”
What awful sights I had been spared! I carried the news home to the Tower. Villegas had not yet come back, the others had heard nothing.