Alfonso had reason to expect he would be favoured by Maria Cristina, as she had always seemed to enjoy his society when he came to visit her family, as a young cadet from Sandhurst. The royal wooer gave expression to his poetic feeling when he found himself on such a delicate mission at the beautiful spot which had been so frequented by our poet Shelley. People in the place seemed at once to recognize the royal visitor, especially as he wore his arm in a sling, from the effect of a carriage accident which had been noised abroad.
Anxious for the interview which was to decide his fate, Alfonso took a basket pony-carriage from Monaco to Arcachon, and, in company with the Duke of Tetuan and the Spanish Ambassador from France, he soon found himself at the Villa Bellegarde, the abode of the Archdukes of Austria.
When the young King passed into the salon, where he was soon welcomed by Maria Cristina, his eyes fell upon the portrait of Mercedes, whom he had lost a few short months before, and he soon found that his bride-elect was in sympathy with his sorrow for his loss, for, in a voice trembling with emotion, she said:
“My dearest desire is to resemble Mercedes in all things, and even if I am to succeed her I can never dare hope to supplant her.”
Such a sympathetic speech could but unseal the heart of the widowed King, and, having succeeded in his wooing, Alfonso could hardly tear himself from the side of the young Archduchess, with whom he could talk so freely of the wife he had lost.
On August 29 the young King finally left Arcachon; the Archduchess accompanied him as far as Bordeaux, and the royal marriage was fixed for November 29.
When the Archduke and Duchess and their daughter arrived at the Casa de Campo on November 23, they were met by the King, his three sisters, and the royal retinue, who accompanied them to the Palace of the Pardo, where the marriage settlement was signed on the 28th.
The bride-elect won all hearts by her delicate and sympathetic behaviour on the occasion, for, turning to the Patriarch of the Indias, she said, in a voice broken with feeling: “Pray that I may make the King happy, for it is a difficult task to succeed a Queen who was a saint, and who will always live in the affections of the King and the people of Spain;” and here she drew a miniature of Mercedes from her bosom, and gazed at it with respectful admiration.
This ceremony took place in the banqueting-hall of Ferdinand VII., and, to the delight of the Spanish people, it was graced by the presence of the ex-Queen, Isabella II.
“The great Isabella is coming!” was the cry that rang through the capital, and the dethroned Queen was moved at the enthusiasm of her quondam subjects as she passed through the city, for she saw that there was more fidelity in her people of low degree than there had been gratitude in the hearts of the great whom she had overwhelmed with favours.