“Much depends,” said Cambronero, “on his Majesty’s health. If unhappily he departs this life without regaining consciousness, we must recover the surreptitiously obtained document at point of sword. No other course will then be open to us. But if, by God’s gracious mercy, the King’s senses return, not a moment must be lost in obtaining from his hand a revocation of the act. He must be told everything; he must be shown how his confidence has been abused, and what base advantage has been taken of a momentary weakness. He must hear the witnesses whom Heaven has raised up for your Majesty.”
“Ha!” cried the lady, with an impatient and energetic gesture, “you are right, Cambronero; we must act! All that can be done, Christina will do. They shall not triumph by weakness of hers! Don Fernando still lives, can yet retract. He shall hear how they have laboured to bring shame upon his name; shall learn the perfidy of those who have environed him with their snares! I go to tell him.”
The Queen left the room. “To me it seems, señores,” said Cambronero, a quiet smile playing on his shrewd features, “that things have happened for the best, and that the result of all this is not doubtful, provided only the king be not already dead. The Apostolicals have been active. Their creatures have worked their way into the cabinet and the camarilla. The guards, the captains-general, and many officers of state are long since gained over. In all cases, on King Ferdinand’s death, a war is inevitable. The succession to the throne is a Gordian knot, to be cut only by the sword. The Infante will never yield his claim, or admit as valid the abrogation of the ancient Salic law.[A] And doubtless the crown would be his, were not the people and the spirit of the times opposed to him. He is retrograde; the Spain of to-day is and must be progressive. The nation is uneasy; it hates despotic government; it ferments from north to south, from Portugal to the Mediterranean; but that fermentation would lack a rallying point without the decree which commands all to cling to Christina and her children, and repel the Infante. The partisans of Carlos have striven to obtain by craft what they could not hope to conquer by the strong hand, and they have succeeded in making a dying monarch revoke in a moment of delirium or imbecility that all-important act. The revocation is in the hands of the Infante; the Salic law is once more the law of the land, and Christina’s children are in their turn disinherited. And if it be impossible to restore the King to consciousness, I fear——”
“What?” cried the Marquis of Santa Cruz.
“That we are on the eve of a great revolution.”
“Hush!” said the Duke of San Lorenzo, looking anxiously around him. “These are dangerous words, my friend.” And his eye fell upon the handsome countenance of Martinez de la Rosa, who smiled thoughtfully.
“Call it reform, Cambronero,” he said; “wise progress of the times, moderate, cautious, adapted to the circumstances; not rash, reckless, sweeping revolution.”
The lawyer cast a keen glance at the former minister of the Cortes.