February 10, 1872, was celebrated at the palace of the Dukes of Bailen by a magnificent ball. The minuet was danced by ladies in most beautiful Pompadour dresses, trimmed with handsome lace, and their hair powdered in the style of the last régime, and the gentlemen showed their high degree in dress and dignity. This minuet was repeated in the Palace of the Plaza del Angel by request of the mother of the Empress Eugénie, and society kept alive the feeling for the ex-régime by the same sort of fêtes until the day dawned for the restoration, which doubtless these gatherings aided, for the little rooms adjoining the salons were the scene of many councils in the cause of the Bourbons.
One day this feeling of antagonism was expressed in a more patent and painful form.
It was a hot evening, which the King and Queen had spent listening to the music in the gardens of the Buen Retiro. The royal couple was returning to the palace by the Arenal, when suddenly a vehicle opposed the passage of the carriage by crossing just in front of it. The coachman checked the horses and cleverly prevented a collision, and just then a shot was directed towards the royal party.
Upon this the King sprang boldly to his feet, exclaiming:
“Here is the King! Fire at him, not at the others!”
But no further attempts were made at assassination, and the retinue reached the palace in safety, where the young Queen sought to still her tremors of anxiety by the sight of her brave young husband standing sound and well before her.
To the King the late hours of the Court were particularly disagreeable. At work from six o’clock in the morning, he rang at eight o’clock for breakfast; astonishment was on the lackey’s face when answering the summons; he heard that it had never been customary for their ex-Majesties to be served before eleven o’clock. So Amadeus, wishing to avoid any friction by insisting on earlier hours, adopted the habit of going to a café for his early meal after long application to State matters had made him conscious of the necessity of breaking his fast.
Thus the maids, who sally forth in Madrid with baskets on their arms to be filled with necessaries for the household, would often return and regale the ears of their mistresses with how they had brushed against His Majesty as they did their business in the market-place. In one of these peregrinations Amadeus noticed that Castelar, the leader of the Republican party, raised his hat to him. Surprised at this sign of respect from the enemy, the young man stopped, and said he wondered that anybody of Castelar’s opinions should salute royalty, to which the great orator replied, with all the grace and charm of an accomplished Castilian:
“My salute was not to royalty, sire, but to the bravest man in Christendom.”
And it was this bravery which aroused the admiration of Spain. However, no quality could overcome the country’s rooted prejudice against “the foreigner,” and when Amadeus had taken his seat on the throne in the magnificent crimson-and-gold setting of the state salon of the palace, it was not to take real possession of his subjects’ hearts. There was no antagonism against the Italian King, but utter indifference for him, which was much more difficult to deal with. He was unknown to the Spaniards, a mere guest, and the necessity of forming a Court for his wife was attended with the difficulty of the ladies of high degree being Alfonsists or Carlists, and thus many of them considered themselves superior to the lady on the throne.