Chapter Yl—FEBRUiART 

 Politics and Social Changes 



" Confound their knavish tricks, 

 Frustrate their politics." ^ 



A YEAR has passed since the murders 

 of King Carlos and his son. 

 " Dastardly," the customary news- 

 paper epithet, is perhaps not very 

 appropriate, and doubtless " coward " is not 

 the right term for a man who goes forth into 

 a street to shoot a king ; but that they were 

 the hideous product of a disordered common- 

 wealth no one will deny. And inured as we 

 are to the accounts of assassination of kings and 

 queens, of presidents and premiers, we may well 

 find something more than usually pathetic in 

 this story — the pleasant and pleasure-loving 

 king slain just when he was rousing himself 

 to a sense of his responsibilities ; the fair young 

 prince surviving his father but a moment ; the 

 wife and mother and queen striving to beat off 



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