386 Appendix I 



from the walls, the brass plate commemorating the oath of 1789 was taken 

 down by Dalmand the paumicr some years ago, and remise a neuf. The 

 court had not been used for four years, and there are but a few rotten 

 old balls to play with, but the court was played in this summer. 



" Queen Ysabel has signed her abdication publicly of the Crown of 

 Spain, and the Prince of Asturias, her son, becomes King Alphonso XII. 

 On the same day a rival Prince of Asturias was born to Don Carlos at 

 Geneva. The Pope has sent his blessing to them both. I well remember 

 the Court of Queen Ysabel, and the besa manos ceremonies in which the 

 little Prince Alfonso figured with his parents, set in a tall gilt chair, 

 having his hand kissed fast asleep. He had in those days a most beautiful 

 little Andalusian pony, a miniature horse, but only twelve hands high, 

 with silky mane and tail sweeping the grounds, legs fine as a gazelle's. 

 When the revolution came which drove the Bourbons from Spain, Prim 

 gave the pony to his son. I met General Prim in the summer of 1863 at 

 the baths of Panticosa, a pale, ugly little man, with no kind of distinction, 

 suffering from an internal disease which gave him constant pain, half his 

 political energy, they said, was caused by this. General Prim was the 

 leader then of the Progresista Party. He was at the baths for his health 

 with his aide-de-camp, General Milans del Bosch." 



The abdication here mentioned of the exiled Queen of Spain was the 

 occasion of the quarrel between France and Prussia a week or two later, 

 which resulted in the disastrous war, the capitulation of Sedan and the 

 overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty. I was, at the time of writing, 

 strongly anti-Bonapartist, a reader of the " Lanterne " and other journals 

 of that type, more than my diary shows. In this I shared the general 

 view of the Parisian mob, and even of the bourgeoisie who were sick of 

 the Empire. The gossip of the Paris streets was retailed to me daily by 

 my old bonne Julie, who had a curious faculty for gathering news as she 

 was constantly wandering about the streets where she had become a well- 

 known character by reason of her kindness to birds and beasts, and suf- 

 ferers of all kinds. With the sergeants-de-ville of the Tuileries quarter 

 she was a favourite, for she was always ready to help in cases of sickness, 

 or accident, coming within their province. A Bretonne peasant by birth, 

 (she had had an uncle a priest, massacred during the great Revolution 

 on the steps of the altar, while he was celebrating mass). Her political 

 prepossessons were strongly Orleanist, as became one who had been in 

 their domestic service, for she had been housemaid in her young days 

 under Louis Philippe in the Chateau, as she called the Tuileries, and 

 knew every room in it from cellar to garret. Another informant of the 

 same class was my cousin, Francis Currie's bonne Julienne, a pendant of 

 my Julie. She had a German husband, waiter in a restaurant, and brought 

 us gossip from the German point of view, also an amusing woman. To 

 these two may be added our man-servant Desire who appears from time 

 to time in the diaries. 



'' 4II1 July. — The ' Constitutionel ' publishes the news that Prim has 

 offered the Crown of Spain to one of the Hohenzollerns, a brother of 

 Prince Charles of Roumania, and that the candidature is accepted. On 



