The royal infant was promptly seized from the arms of its mother at the moment of the attack, by an officer of the Royal Guard, and for this presence of mind the soldier was afterwards given the title of the Marquis of Amparo.
With regard to the assailant, the Queen said to her Ministers: “You have often vexed me by turning a deaf ear to my pleas of mercy for criminals, but I wish this man to be punished immediately.” And, with the outraged feeling of the object of such a dastardly deed, Isabella turned to the would-be murderer, and said: “What have I ever done to offend you, that you should have attacked me thus?”
During the trial in the succeeding days the Queen softened to the criminal, and said to her advisers: “No, no! don’t kill him for what he did to me!”
However, justice delivered the man to the hangman five days after his deed.
The efforts to discover Merino’s accomplices were fruitless, and it was thought that the deed had been prompted more by the demagogue party than by the Carlists.
The cool, cynical manner of the cleric never left him even at the moment of his execution.
When the priest’s hair was cut for the last time, he said to the barber: “Don’t cut much, or I shall catch cold.”
The doomed man’s request to say a few words from the scaffold was refused. When asked what he had wished to say, he replied: “Nothing much. I pity you all for having to stay in this world of corruption and misery.”
The ovation which the Queen had when she finally went to the Church of Atocha to present the infant surpasses description. Flowers strewed the way, and tears of joy showed the sympathy of the people with the Queen in her capacity as mother, and at her escape from the attempt on her life.
From 1852 to 1854 Isabella failed to please her subjects, and the outburst of loyalty which had followed the attempt on her life gradually waned. Curiously indifferent to what was for her personal interest, as well as for the welfare of the country, Isabella turned a deaf ear to the advice of her Ministers to dissolve a Cabinet which was under the leadership of the Count of San Luis, who was known to be the tool of Queen Maria Cristina, now so much hated by the Spaniards. Miraflores wrote a letter to Isabella, advising the return of Espartero, the Count of Valencia, but the letter never reached its destination.