Don Marcos remained silent. He was not interested in the members of that branch, not he.
"Also," Castro continued mischievously, "in the Casino before the war, I met Don Jaime, your own king at present. A great fellow for gambling! He risked thousand franc chips by the handful. He had a lot of money coming from somewhere. In the Casino they all used to say that it was sent him from Madrid, on condition that he should have no children and allow his claims to the throne to die out with him."
"And just to think," murmured Novoa, without realizing that he was speaking aloud, "that for both of these families, back there, so many men have killed one another. To think, that for a question of inheritance among people like that we have gone back a century in European life!"
"You too!" exclaimed the Colonel, provoked again. "A scholar, saying a thing like that! I can hardly believe my ears!"
CHAPTER II
AT the end of the second Carlist war a Spanish officer, Don Miguel Saldaña, had found himself, as a result of the defeat, banished forever from his own country and condemned to a life of poverty and obscurity. The Madrid papers, without prefixing his name with any slanderous adjectives, called him simply "the rebel chief Saldaña." This courtesy, doubtless, was intended to distinguish him from the other party chiefs who in Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, had waged a campaign of pillage and executions for five years. Among his own people he was known as General Miguel Saldaña, Marquis of Villablanca. The pretender, Don Carlos, had given him that title because Villablanca was the name of the town where Saldaña had practically annihilated a column of the Liberal army. The topographical information of Saldaña's Chief of Staff—a local priest who had spent his whole life in doing nothing except saying mass on Sundays and spending the rest of the week hunting in the mountains with his dog and gun—gave him an opportunity to take the enemy by surprise, and he won a notorious victory.
When he crossed the frontier as a fugitive, through refusing to recognize the Bourbons as the constitutional rulers, "the rebel chief Saldaña" was twenty-nine years of age. A second son in a proud and ruined family, he had been obliged to resist the traditions of his house which presented for him an ecclesiastical career. When his studies at the Military School at Toledo were just finishing, the Revolution of 1868 caused him to renounce a commission to escape being under orders from certain generals who had participated in overthrowing royalty. When Don Carlos took up arms, Saldaña was one of the first to volunteer his services; and having gone through a military school, and received a good education, he at once became conspicuous among the guerrillas of the so-called Army of the Center, made up, for the most part, of country squires, village clerks, and mountain priests.
Besides, Saldaña distinguished himself for a reckless though rather unfortunate bravery. He always led the attack at the head of his men and consequently was wounded in the majority of his fights. But his wounds were "lucky wounds" as the soldiers say. They left marks of glory on his body without destroying his vigorous health.
Finding himself alone in Paris, where his only resource was the admiration of a few elderly "legitimist" ladies of the aristocratic Faubourg Saint Germain, he left for Vienna. There his king had friends and relatives. His youth and his exploits gained him admission as a hero of the old monarchy to the circle of archdukes. The war between Russia and Turkey tore him away from his pleasant life as an interesting hanger-on. Being a fighting man and a Catholic, he felt it his duty to wage war against the Turks; and with recommendations as a protégé of some influential Austrians, he went to the Court at Saint Petersburg. General Saldaña became a mere Commander of a Squadron in the Russian Cavalry. The officers conversed with him in French. His horsemen understood him well enough when he placed himself in front of his division, and, unsheathing his sword, galloped ahead of them against the enemy.
Various successful charges and two more "lucky wounds" won him a certain celebrity. At the end of the war he had gained numerous friends among officers of the nobility, and was presented in the most aristocratic drawing rooms. One evening at a ball given by a Grand Duchess, he saw close at hand the most fashionable and most talked of young woman of the season: the Princess Lubimoff.