Within, the two stout brothers and the little humorously featured almoner had already seen to the safety of every window and door. Above stairs in a retired chamber the little Queen had been sequestered from any breath of the plague-stricken sentries keeping their last vigil without, and also that she might be safe from every random bullet if the place should be attacked.
Rollo followed the Basque upwards to the roof, and Concha, with her capa still about her shoulders, followed Rollo into the light of the hall, nervously dragging the folds as low as possible about her knees.
The little Queen had two candles before her, and under her fingers was a great book of maps, upon which dragons and tritons, whales and sea monsters, writhed across uncharted seas, while an equal wealth of unicorns and fire-breathing gryphons freely perambulated the unexplored continental spaces. As it chanced Isabel was not at all sleepy, and to quiet her the Basque had set out some of the illuminating materials belonging to the order on slabs of porcelain, and with these she was employed in making gay the tall pages with the national yellow and red, and (as her great namesake had done before her) planting the flag of Spain over considerably more than half the world.
But as soon as the girl's eyes fell on Concha, she sprang up and let paint-brush and china-slab fall together to the ground.
"Oh, I know you," she cried (here Rollo trembled); "you are the new page-boy from Aranjuez! He was to arrive to-day. What is your name?"
"Carlos," said the new page-boy from Aranjuez, from whose cheek also the rose had momentarily fled.
"And why do you wear that curious red cap?" cried the little Queen. "I know Doña Susana would be very angry if she saw you. Pages must show their own hair and wear it in curls too. Have you pretty hair?"
"It is the cap of liberty the boy wears, Princess!" said the Basque friar, breaking in quickly, and with some irony. "Do you not know that since Señor Mendizabel came to Madrid from England we are all to have as much liberty as we want?"
"Well," replied the Princess, tartly, "all I know is that I wish I had more of it. Doña Susana will not let me do a single thing I want to do. But when I grow up I mean to do just what I like."
Which truly royal and Bourbon sentiment had a better fate than most prophecies, for Isabel the Second afterwards lived to fulfil it to the uttermost, both in the spirit and in the letter.