The society of the Italian friends of my first visit gave me much
pleasure. My first call at the Pagellas' was a blank; at the next, I
was received like a son of the house and heaped with reproaches for not
having left my address; they had tried to find me at my former hotel,
and endeavoured in vain to learn where I was staying from Scandinavians
whom they knew by name; now I was to spend all the time I could with
them, as I used to do in the old days. They were delighted to see me
again, and when I wished to leave, drove me home in their carriage. I
resumed my former habit of spending the greater part of my spare time
with Southerners; once more I was transported to Southern Europe and
South America. The very first day I dined at their house I met a jovial
old Spaniard, a young Italian, who was settled in Egypt, and a very
coquettish young Brazilian girl. The Spaniard, who had been born in
Venezuela, was an engineer who had studied conditions in Panama for
eleven years, and had a plan for the cutting of the isthmus. He talked
a great deal about the project, which Lesseps took up many years
afterwards.
Pagella, too, was busy with practical plans, setting himself technical
problems, and solving them. Thus he had discovered a new method of
constructing railway carriages on springs, with a mechanism to prevent
collisions. He christened this the _Virginie-ressort_, after his wife,
and had had offers for it from the Russian government.
An Italian engineer, named Casellini, who had carried out the
construction for him, was one of the many bold adventurers that one met
with among the Southerners in Paris. He had been sent to Spain the year
before by Napoleon III to direct the counter-revolution there. Being an
engineer, he knew the whole country, and had been in constant
communication with Queen Isabella and the Spanish Court in Paris. He
gave illuminating accounts of Spanish corruptibility. He had bribed the
telegraph officials in the South of Spain, where he was, and saw all
political telegrams before the Governor of the place. In Malaga, where
he was leading the movement against the Government, he very narrowly
escaped being shot; he had been arrested, his despatches intercepted
and 1,500 rifles seized, but he bribed the officials to allow him to
make selection from the despatches and destroy those that committed
him. In Madrid he had had an audience of Serrano, after this latter had
forbidden the transmission from the town of any telegrams that were not
government telegrams; he had taken with him a telegram drawn up by the
French party, which sounded like an ordinary business letter, and
secured its being sent off together with the government despatches.
Casellini had wished to pay for the telegram, but Serrano had dismissed
the suggestion with a wave of his hand, rung a bell and given the
telegram to a servant. It was just as in Scribe's _Queen Marguerite's
Novels_, the commission was executed by the enemy himself.
Such romantic adventures did not seem to be rare in Spain. Prim himself
had told the Pagellas how at the time of the failure of the first
insurrection he had always, in his flight, (in spite of his defective
education, he was more magnanimous and noble-minded than any king),
provided for the soldiers who were sent out after him, ordered food and
drink for them in every inn he vacated, and paid for everything
beforehand, whereas the Government let their poor soldiers starve as
soon as they were eight or ten miles from Madrid.
I often met a very queer, distinguished looking old Spaniard named Don
José Guell y Rente, who had been married to a sister of King Francis,
the husband of King Isabella, but had been separated from her after, as
he declared, she had tried to cut his throat. As witness to his
connubial difficulties, he showed a large scar across his throat. He
was well-read and, amongst other things, enthusiastically admired
Scandinavian literature because it had produced the world's greatest
poet, Ossian, with whom he had become acquainted in Cesarotti's Italian
translation. It was useless to attempt to explain to him the difference
between Scandinavia and Scotland. They are both in the North, he would
reply.