Cardinal Benavides performed the sacred office of the occasion. The doctor could not suppress his emotion, and hid his face, covered with tears, in his hands; and Count Morphy, the King’s faithful secretary, went sorrowfully to announce the sad news to the Queen-mother and the rest of the Royal Family.
At nine o’clock the next morning the little daughters came to embrace their father for the last time. The Queen, with only the assistance of Dr. Camison, prepared the body of her husband for burial, and she assisted at the obsequies in the Escorial with her little daughter, the Queen of Spain. Arrived at the historic monastery, the Augustine Brothers came to meet the sad cortège, in their black vestments and holding lighted torches, and, headed by the Prior and the Principal, the procession passed to the burial-place of the Kings.
The iron seemed to enter the soul of Maria Cristina when the Chief of the Palace cried before the catafalque: “Señor, señor, señor!”
Solemn silence reigned. “Then our Sovereign really is no more,” said the Chamberlain. He broke his wand of office, whilst the drums of the halberdiers, the bells of the cathedral, and the booming of the cannon, added to the solemnity of the occasion. The Bishop of Madrid officiated at the final office, after the coffin was finally carried with countless candles down into the Pantheon, which he had entered ten years before in all the exuberance and with all the illusions of youth.
Then the unhappy widowed Queen returned to Madrid, there to pass the sad months till the child should be born who might prove the future King of Spain.
It was an impressive sight to see the Queen, with her orphaned little girls, take the solemn oath of Regency. Putting her hand on the Gospels, which the President held open, she said:
“I swear by God to be faithful to the heir of the Crown during the minority, and to guarantee the Constitution and the laws. May God help me and be my Defence; and if I fail, may He require it of me!”
Then the Queen sat down with her little girls, and the Prime Minister made the following formula:
“The Parliament has heard the solemn oath just made by Her Majesty the Queen-Regent, to be faithful to the legitimate successor of Don Alfonso XII., and to guard the Constitution and its laws.”
The marriage of the Infanta Eulalia with Don Antonio, son of the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, in 1886, was the next interesting function at the Court of Spain.