_Madrid, 1807._
My removal to this capital has been sudden and unexpected. My friend
Leandro, from whom I am become inseparable, was advised by his
physicians to seek relief from a growing melancholy--the effect of
a mortal aversion to his professional duties, and to the intolerant
religious system with which they are connected--in the freedom and
dissipation of the court; and I found it impossible to tear myself
from him.
The journey from Seville to Madrid, a distance of about two hundred
and sixty English miles, is usually performed in heavy carriages
drawn by six mules, in the space of from ten to eleven days. A party
of four persons is formed by the coachman, (Mayoral) who fixes the
day and hour for setting out, arranges the length of the stages,
prescribes the time for getting up in the morning, and even takes
care that every passenger attends mass on a Sunday, or any other
church festival during the journey. As it was, however, of importance
not to delay my friend’s removal from Seville, we chose the more
expensive conveyance by posting, and having obtained a passport, set
off in an open and half foundered chaise--the usual vehicles till
within thirty miles of Madrid.
You will form some idea of our police and government, from the
circumstance of our being obliged to take our passport, not for
Madrid, but Salamanca, in order thus to smuggle ourselves into the
capital. The minister of _Gracia y Justicia_, or home department,
Caballero, one of the most willing and odious instruments of our
arbitrary court, being annoyed by the multitude of place-hunters,
whom we denominate Pretendientes, who flocked to Madrid from the
provinces; has lately issued an order forbidding all persons
whatever, to come to the capital, unless they previously obtain a
royal license. To await the King’s pleasure would have exposed us
to great inconvenience, and probably to a positive denial. But as
the minister’s order was now two or three months old, a period at
which our court-laws begin to grow obsolete, and we did not mean to
trouble _his excellency_; we trusted to luck and our purse, as to any
little obstacles which might arise from the interference of inferior
officers.
I shall not detain you with a description of our journey--the
delays at the post-houses--our diminished haste at Valdepeñas for
the sake of its delicious wine just as it is drawn from the immense
earthen-jars, where it is kept buried in the ground; and, finally,
the ugly but close and tight post-chaises drawn by three mules
a-breast, which are used from Aranjuez to Madrid. I do not love
description, probably because I cannot succeed in it. You will,
therefore, have the goodness to apply for a picture of this _town_
(for I wish you to remark that it is not reckoned among our _cities_)
in Burgoing, Townsend, or some other professed traveller. My
narrative shall, as hitherto, be limited to what these gentlemen were
not likely to see or understand with the accuracy and distinctness of
a native.
The influence of the court being unlimited in Spain, no object
deserves a closer examination from such as wish to be acquainted
with the moral state of this country. I must, therefore, begin
with a sketch of the main sources of that influence, carefully
excluding every report which has reached me through any but the most
respectable channels, or an absolute notoriety. The fountain-head
of power and honours among us has, till lately, been the Queen, a
daughter of the late Duke of Parma, a very ugly woman, now fast
approaching old age, yet affecting youth and beauty. She had been but
a short time married to the present King, then Prince of Asturias,
when she discovered a strong propensity to gallantry, which the
austere and jealous temper of her father-in-law Charles III. was
scarcely able to check. Her husband, one of those happy beings born
to derive bliss from ignorance, has ever preserved a strong and
exclusive attachment to her person. This attachment, combined with a
most ludicrous simplicity, closes his mind against every approach of
suspicion.
The first favourite of the Princess that awakened the King’s
jealousy, was a gentleman of his son’s household, named Ortíz.
Concerned for the honour of the Prince, no less than for the
strictness of morals, which, from religious principles, he had
anxiously preserved in his court; he issued an order, banishing
Ortíz to one of the most distant provinces. The Princess, unable to
bear this separation, and well acquainted with the character of her
husband, engaged him to obtain the recall of Ortíz from the King.
Scrupulously faithful to his promise, the young Prince watched the
first opportunity to entreat his father’s favour, and falling upon
his knees, asked the boon of Ortíz’s return, gravely and affectingly
urging that “his wife Louisa was quite unhappy without him, as he
used to amuse her amazingly.” The old King, surprised and provoked
by this wonderful simplicity, turned his back upon the good-natured
petitioner, exclaiming: _Calla, tonto! Déxalo irse: Qué simple que
eres!_ “Hold your tongue, booby! Let him go: What a simpleton thou
art!”
Louisa deprived, however, of her _entertaining_ Ortíz, soon found a
substitute in a young officer named Luis de Godoy. He was the eldest
of three brothers, of an ancient but decayed family, in the province
of Estremadura, who served together in the Horse-Guards, a corps
exclusively composed of gentlemen, the lowest ranks being filled by
commissioned officers. Scarcely had this new attachment been formed,
when the old King unmercifully nipped it in the bud, by a decree
of banishment against Don Luis. The royal order was, as usual, so
pressing, that the distressed lover could only charge his second
brother Manuel with a parting message, and obtain a promise of his
being the bearer of as many tokens of constancy and despair, as could
be safely transmitted by the post.
It is a part of the cumbrous etiquette of the Spanish Court to give
a separate guard to every member of the royal family, though all
live within the King’s palace; and to place sentinels with drawn
swords at the door of every suite of apartments. This service is
performed without interruption day and night, by the military corps
just mentioned. Manuel Godoy did not find it difficult to be on duty
in the Prince’s guard, as often as he had any letter to deliver. A
certain tune played on the flute, an instrument with which that young
officer used to beguile the idle hours of the guard, was the signal
which drew the Princess to a private room, to which the messenger had
secret, but free access.
There is every reason to believe that _Luis’s_ amorous dispatches had
their due effect for some weeks, and that his royal mistress lived
almost exclusively upon their contents. Yet time was working a sad
revolution in the fortunes of the banished lover. Manuel grew every
day more interesting, and the letters less so, till the faithless
confidant became the most _amusing_ of mortals to the Princess, and
consequently a favourite with her good-natured husband.
The death of the old King had now removed every obstacle to the
Queen’s gallantries, and Manuel Godoy was rapidly advanced to the
highest honours of the state, and the first ranks of the army. But
the new sovereign did not yet feel quite easy upon the throne; and
the dying King’s recommendation of his favourite Floridablanca,
by prolonging that minister’s power, still set some bounds to the
Queen’s caprices. Charles IV., though perfectly under his wife’s
control, could not be prevailed upon to dismiss an old servant of
his father without any assignable reason; and some respect for
public opinion, a feeling which seldom fails to cast a transient
gleam of hope on the first days of every reign, obliged the Queen
herself to employ other means than a mere act of her will in the
ruin of the premier. He might, however, have preserved his place
for some time, and been allowed to retire with his honours, had not
his jealousy of the rising Godoy induced him to oppose the tide of
favour which was now about to raise that young man to a Grandeeship
of the first class. To provide for the splendour of that elevated
rank, the Queen had induced her husband to bestow upon Godoy a
princely estate, belonging to the crown, from which he was to take
the title of the Duke de la Alcúdia. Floridablanca, either from
principle, or some less honourable motive, thought it necessary to
oppose this grant as illegal; and having induced the King to consult
the Council of Castille upon that point, endeavoured to secure an
answer agreeable to his wishes, by means of a letter to his friend
the Count Cifuentes. Most unluckily for the minister, before this
letter arrived from San Ildefonso, where the court was at that time,
the president was seized with a mortal complaint, and the dispatches
falling into the hands of his substitute Cañada, were secretly
transmitted to the Queen. It is needless to add, that the report of
the council was favourable, that Godoy was made Duke de la Alcúdia,
and that both he and the Queen were now wholly bent upon their
opposer’s ruin.
During Floridablanca’s influence with the King, a manuscript satire
had been circulated against that minister, in which he was charged
with having defrauded one _Salucci_, an Italian banker connected with
the Spanish Government. Too conscious, it should seem, of the truth
of the accusation, Floridablanca suspected none but the injured party
of being the contriver and circulator of the lampoon. The obnoxious
composition was, however, written in better Spanish than Salucci
could command, and the smarting minister could not be satisfied
without punishing the author. His spies having informed him that
the Marquis de Manca, a man of wit and talent, was intimate at
Salucci’s, he had no need of farther proofs against him. The banker
was immediately banished out of the kingdom, and the poet confined
to the city of Burgos, under the inspection and control of the civil
authorities.
But the time was now arrived when these men, who were too well
acquainted with the state of Spain to look for redress at the hands
of justice, were to obtain satisfaction from the spirit of revenge
which urged the Queen to seek the ruin of her husband’s minister.
Charles IV. being informed of Floridablanca’s conduct towards Salucci
and Manca, the last was recalled to Court. His enemy’s papers,
including a large collection of _billets-doux_, were seized and put
into the Marquis’s hands, to be used as documents in a secret process
instituted against the minister: who, according to his own rules
of justice, was, in the mean time, sent a prisoner to the fortress
of Pamplona. His confinement, however, was not prolonged beyond
the necessary time to ruin him in the King’s opinion; and upon the
marriage of two of the Royal Princesses, an _indulto_, or pardon,
was issued, by which, though declared guilty of embezzling forty-two
millions of _reals_, he was enlarged from his close confinement, and
allowed to reside at Murcia, his native town.
I am not certain, however, whether Floridablanca’s dismissal did
not shortly precede his accusation by _Manca_, as the immediate
consequence of his efforts to make the King join the coalition
against France after the death of Louis XVI. Charles IV. was, it
seems, the only sovereign in Europe, who felt no alarm at the fate
of the unfortunate Louis; and had more at heart the recollection
of a personal slight from his cousin, than all the ties of common
interest and blood. Charles had learned that, on his accession to the
throne of Spain, the usual letter of congratulation being presented
for signature to Louis, that monarch humourously observed, that he
thought the letter hardly necessary, “for the poor man,” he said,
“is a mere cypher, completely governed and henpecked by his wife.”
This joke had made such a deep impression on the King, as to draw
from him, when Louis was decapitated, the unfeeling and almost brutal
remark that “a gentleman so ready to find fault with others, did not
seem to have managed his own affairs very well.” The Count de Aranda,
who, in the cabinet councils, had constantly voted for peace with
France, was appointed, in February, 1792, to succeed Floridablanca.
But the turn of affairs, and the pressing remonstrances of the allied
sovereigns, altered the views of Charles; and having, at the end of
seven months, dismissed Aranda with all the honours of his office,
Godoy, then Duke of Alcúdia, was appointed his successor to begin
hostilities against France. I need not enter into a narrative of that
ill-conducted and disastrous war. An appearance of success cheered
up the Spaniards, always ready to fight with their neighbours on the
other side of the Pyrenees. But the French armies having received
reinforcements, would have soon paid a visit to Charles at Madrid, if
his favourite minister, with more address than he ever discovered in
his subsequent management of political affairs, had not concluded and
ratified the peace of Basle.
The fears of the whole country at the progress of the French arms
had been so strong, that peace was hailed with enthusiasm; and the
public joy, on that occasion, would have been unalloyed but for the
extravagant rewards granted to Godoy for concluding it. A new dignity
above the grandeeship was created for him alone, and, under the
title of _Prince of the Peace_, Godoy was placed next in rank to the
Princes of the royal blood.
There was but one step in the scale of honours which could raise a
mere subject higher than the Queen’s favour had exalted Godoy--a
marriage into the royal family. But the only distinction which love
seemed not blind enough to confer on the favourite, he actually owed
to the jealousy of his mistress.
Among the beauties whom the hope of the young minister’s favour drew
to Madrid from all parts of Spain, there was an unmarried lady of
the name of Tudó, a native of Malaga, whose charms both of person
and mind would have captivated a much less susceptible heart than
Godoy’s. From the moment she was presented by her parents, La Tudó
(we are perfectly unceremonious in naming ladies of all ranks)
obtained so decided a supremacy above the numerous sharers in the
favourite’s love, that the Queen, who had hitherto overlooked a
crowd of occasional rivals, set her face against an attachment which
bid fair to last for life. It had, indeed, subsisted long enough
to produce unquestionable proof of the nature of the intimacy, in
a child whose birth, though not blazoned forth as if sanctioned by
public opinion, was not hidden with any consciousness of shame.
A report being circulated at court, that the Prince of the Peace
was secretly married to La Tudó, the Queen, in a fit of jealousy,
accused him to the King as guilty of ingratitude, in thus having
allied himself to a woman of no birth, without the slightest mark
of deference to his royal benefactors. The King, whose fondness
for Godoy had grown above his wife’s control, seemed inclined to
discredit the story of the marriage; but, being at that time at one
of the royal country residences called _Sitios_--the _Escurial_,
I believe, where the ministers have apartments within the palace;
the Queen led her husband through a secret passage, to a room where
they surprised the lovers taking their supper in a comfortable
_tête-à-tête_.
The feelings excited by this sight must have been so different in
each of the royal couple, that one can scarcely feel surprised at the
strangeness of the result. Godoy had only to deny the marriage to
pacify the King, whose good nature was ready to make allowances for
a mere love-intrigue of his favourite. The Queen, hopeless of ever
being the exclusive object of the gallantries of a man to whom she
was chained by the blindest infatuation, probably feared lest the
step she had taken should tear him away from her presence. A slave
to her vehement passions, and a perfect stranger to those delicate
feelings which vice itself cannot smother in some hearts, she seemed
satisfied with preventing her chief rival from rising above her own
rank of a mistress; and, provided the place was occupied by one to
whom her paramour was indifferent, wished to see him married, and be
herself the match-maker.
The King’s late brother, Don Luis, who, in spite of a cardinal’s hat,
and the archbishoprick of Seville, conferred on him before he was of
age to take holy orders, stole a kind of left-handed marriage with a
Spanish lady of the name of Vallabríga; had left two daughters and
a son, under the guardianship of the archbishop of Toledo. Though
not, hitherto, allowed to take their father’s name, these children
were considered legitimate; and it is probable that the King had been
desirous of putting them in possession of the honours due to their
birth, long before the Queen proposed the eldest of her nieces both
as a reward for Godoy’s services, and a means to prevent in future
such sallies of youthful folly as divided his attention between
pleasure and the service of the crown. These or similar reasons
(for history must content herself with conjecture, when the main
springs of events lie not only behind the curtain of state, but those
of a four-post bed) produced in the space of a few weeks, a public
recognition of Don Luis’s children, and the announcement of his
eldest daughter’s intended marriage with the Prince of the Peace.
The vicious source of Godoy’s unbounded power, the temper of the
Court where he enjoyed it, and the crowd of flatterers which his
elevation had gathered about him, would preclude all expectation
of any great or virtuous qualities in his character. Yet there are
facts connected with the beginning of his government which prove
that he was not void of those vague wishes of doing good, which,
as they spring up, are “choked with cares and riches and pleasures
of this world.” I have been assured by an acute and perfectly
disinterested observer, whose high rank gave him free access to the
favourite, during part of the period when with the title of Duke de
la Alcúdia he was at the head of the Spanish ministry, that “there
was every reason to believe him active, intelligent, and attentive
in the discharge of his duty; and that he was perfectly exempt from
all those airs and affectation which men who rise by fortune more
than merit, are apt to be justly accused of.” Though, like all the
Spanish youth brought up in the military profession, he was himself
unlettered, he shewed great respect for talents and literature in
the formation of the ministry which succeeded his own; when, from his
new rank, and his marriage into the royal family, he was considered
above the duties of office.
Saavedra, whom he made first minister of state, is a man of great
natural quickness, improved both by reading and the observation of
real life; but so irresolute of purpose, so wavering in judgment, so
incapable of decision, that, while in office, he seemed more fit to
render public business interminable, than to direct its course in his
own department. Jovellanos, appointed to be Saavedra’s colleague, is
justly considered as one of the living ornaments of our literature.
Educated at Salamanca in one of the _Colegios Mayores_, before the
reform which stripped those bodies of their honours and influence, he
was made a judge in his youth, and gradually ascended to one of the
supreme councils of the nation. His upright and honourable conduct
in every stage of his life, both public and private, the urbanity of
his manners, and the formal elegance of his conversation, render him
a striking exemplification of the old Spanish _Caballero_. With the
virtues and agreeable qualities of that character, he unites many of
the prejudices peculiar to the period to which it belongs. To a most
passionate attachment to the privileges and distinctions of blood,
he joins a superstitious veneration for all kinds of external forms.
The strongest partialities warp his fine understanding, confining
it, upon numerous subjects, to distorted or limited views. As a judge
and a man of letters, he was respected and admired by all. As a chief
justice in any of our provincial courts of law, he would have been a
blessing to the people of his district; while the dignified leisure
of that situation would have enabled him to enrich our literature
with the productions of his elegant mind. As a minister, however,
through whose hands all the gifts of the Crown were to be distributed
to a hungry country, where two-thirds of the better classes look
up to patronage for a comfortable subsistence, he disappointed the
hopes of the nation. At Court, his high notions of rank converted his
rather prim manner into downright stiffness; and his blind partiality
for the natives of Asturias, his province--probably because he
thought them the purest remnant of Gothic blood in Spain--made him
the most unpopular of ministers. Instead of promoting the welfare
of the nation by measures which gradually, and upon a large scale,
might counteract the influence of a profligate Court, he tried to
oppose the Queen’s established interference in detail. She once made
a personal application to Jovellanos in favour of a certain candidate
for a prebendal stall. The minister gave her a flat denial, alleging
that the person in question had not qualified himself at any of the
universities. “At which of them,” said the Queen, “did you receive
your education?”--“At Salamanca, Madam.”--“What a pity,” rejoined
she, “that they forgot to teach you manners!”
While employed in this petty warfare, which must have soon ended in
his dismissal, a circumstance occurred, which, though it was the
means of reconciling the Queen to Jovellanos for a time, has finally
consigned him to a fortress in Majorca, where to this day he lingers
under a confinement no less unjust than severe.
The ceremony of Godoy’s marriage was scarcely over, when he resumed
his intimacy with La Tudó in the most open and unguarded manner. The
Queen, under a relapse of jealousy, seemed so determined to clip the
wings of her spoiled favourite, that Jovellanos was deceived into a
hope of making this pique the means of reclaiming his patron, if not
to the path of virtue, at least to the rules of external propriety.
Saavedra, better acquainted with the world, and well aware that Godoy
could, at pleasure, resume any degree of ascendancy over the Queen,
entered reluctantly into the plot. Not so Jovellanos. Treating this
Court intrigue as one of the regular lawsuits on which he had so long
practised his skill and impartiality, he could not bring himself
to proceed without serving a notice upon the party concerned. He
accordingly forwarded a remonstrance to the Prince of the Peace, in
which he reminded him of his public and conjugal duties, in the most
forcible style of forensic and moral eloquence. The Queen, in the
mean time, had worked up her husband into a feeling approaching to
anger against Godoy, and the decree for his banishment was all but
signed before the offending gallant thought himself in such danger
as to require the act of submission, which alone could restore him
to the good graces of his neglected mistress. He owed, however, his
safety to nothing but Saavedra’s indecision and dilatoriness. That
minister could not be persuaded to present the decree of banishment
for the royal signature, till the day after it had been agreed upon.
Godoy, in the mean time, obtained a private interview with the Queen,
who, under the influence of a long-checked and returning passion, in
order to exculpate herself, represented the Ministers--the very men
whom Godoy had raised into power--as the authors of the plot; and
probably attributed the plan to Jovellanos, making him, from this
moment, the marked object of the favourite’s resentment.
The baffled Ministers, though not immediately dismissed, must have
felt the unsteadiness of the ground on which they stood, and dreaded
the revenge of an enemy, who had already shewn, in the case of
Admiral Malaspina, that he was both able and willing to wreak it on
the instruments of the Queen’s jealousy. That officer, an Italian by
birth, had just returned from a voyage round the globe, performed
at the expense of this Government, when the Queen, who found it
difficult to regulate the feelings of her husband towards Godoy, to
the sudden and rapid variations of her own, induced her confidant,
the Countess of Matallana, to engage him in drawing up a memorial to
the King, containing observations on the public and private conduct
of the favourite, and representing him in the blackest colours.
Malaspina was at this time preparing the account of his voyage for
publication, with the assistance of a conceited sciolist, a Sevillian
friar called Padre Gil, who, in our great dearth of real knowledge,
was looked upon as a miracle of erudition and eloquence. The Admiral,
putting aside his charts and log-books, eagerly collected every
charge against Godoy which was likely to make an impression upon the
King; while the friar, inspired with the vision of a mitre ready
to drop on his head, clothed them in the most florid and powerful
figures which used to enrapture his audience from the pulpit. Nothing
was now wanting but the Queen’s command to spring the mine under the
feet of the devoted Godoy, when the intended victim, informed of
his danger, and taking advantage of one of those soft moments which
made the Queen and all her power his own, drew from her a confession
of the plot, together with the names of the conspirators. In a few
days, Malaspina found himself conveyed to a fortress, where, with his
voyage, maps, scientific collections, and every thing relating to
the expedition, he remains completely forgotten; while the reverend
writer of the memorial was forwarded under an escort to Seville,
the scene of his former literary glory, to be confined in a house of
correction, where juvenile offenders of the lower classes are sent to
undergo a salutary course of flogging.
The Queen was preparing the dismissal of Saavedra and Jovellanos,
when a dangerous illness of the former brought forward a new actor in
the intricate drama of Court intrigue, who, had he known how to use
his power, might have worked the complete ruin of its hero.
The First Clerk of the Secretary of State’s Office--a place answering
to that of your under-secretary of State--was a handsome young man,
called Urquijo. His name is probably not unknown to you, as he was
a few years ago with the Spanish Ambassador in London, where his
attachment to the French jacobins and their measures could not
fail to attract some notice, from the unequivocal heroic proof of
self-devotion which he shewed to that party. It was, in fact, an
attempt to drown himself in the pond at Kensington Gardens, upon
learning the peace made by Buonaparte with the Pope at Tolentino; a
treaty which disappointed his hopes of seeing the final destruction
of the Papal See, and Rome itself a heap of ruins, in conformity
to a decree of the French Directory. Fortune, however, having
determined to transform our brave _Sans-Culotte_ into a courtier,
afforded him a timely rescue from the muddy deep; and when, under
the care of Doctor V----, he had been brought to understand how
little his drowning would influence the events of the French war, he
returned to Madrid, to wield his pen in the office where his previous
qualification of _Joven de Lenguas_,[49] had entitled him to a place,
till he rose, by seniority, to that of Under-Secretary.
[49] Young men are appointed to go abroad with the Spanish
ambassadors in order to learn foreign languages, and thus qualify
themselves as diplomatists.
Every Spanish minister has a day appointed in the course of the
week--called _Dia de Despacho_--when he lays before the King the
contents of his portfolio, to dispose of them according to his
Majesty’s pleasure. The Queen, who is excessively fond of power,[50]
never fails to attend on the occasions. The minister, during this
audience, stands, or, if desired, sits on a small stool near a
large table placed between him and the King and Queen. The love
of patronage, not of business, is, of course, the object of the
Queen’s assiduity; while nothing but the love of gossip enables her
husband to endure the drudgery of these sittings. During Saavedra’s
ministry, his Majesty was highly delighted with the premier’s powers
of conversation, and his inexhaustible fund of good stories. The
portfolio was laid upon the table; the Queen mentioned the names of
her _protegés_, and the King, referring all other business to the
decision of the minister, began a comfortable chat, which lasted till
bed-time. When Saavedra was taken with that sudden and dangerous
illness which Godoy’s enemies were inclined to attribute to poison,
(a suspicion, however, which both the favourite’s real good nature,
and his subsequent lenity towards Saavedra, absolutely contradict)
the duty of carrying the portfolio to the King devolved upon the
Under-secretary. Urquijo’s handsome person and elegant manners made
a deep impression upon the Queen; and ten thousand whispers spread
the important news the next morning, that her Majesty had desired the
young clerk to take a seat.
[50] It is a well known fact that there are letters in existence
addressed by her, while Princess of Asturias, to the judges in
the provinces, asking their votes in pending lawsuits.
This favourable impression, it is more than probable, was heightened
by a fresh pique against Godoy, whose growing disgust of his royal
mistress, and firm attachment to La Tudó, offered her Majesty daily
subjects of mortification. She now conceived the plan of making
Urquijo, not only her instrument of revenge, but, it is generally
believed, a substitute for the incorrigible favourite. But in this
amorous Court even a Queen can hardly find a vacant heart; and
Urquijo’s was too deeply engaged to one of Godoy’s sisters, to appear
sensible of her Majesty’s condescension. He mustered, however,
a sufficient portion of gallantry to support the Queen in her
resolution of separating Godoy from the Court, and depriving him of
all influence in matters of government.
It is, indeed, surprising, that the Queen’s resentment proceeded no
farther against the man who had so often provoked it, and that his
disgrace was not attended with the usual consequences of degradation
and imprisonment. Many and powerful circumstances combined, however,
in Godoy’s favour--the King’s almost parental fondness towards
him--the new minister’s excessive conceit of his own influence
and abilities, no less than his utter contempt of the discarded
favourite--and, most of all, the Queen’s unextinguished and ever
reviving passion, backed by her fears of driving to extremities a man
who had, it is said, in his power, the means of exposing her without
condemning himself.
During Saavedra’s ministry, and that interval of coldness produced by
Godoy’s capricious gallantries, which enabled his enemies to make the
first attempt against him; his royal mistress had conceived a strong
fancy for one Mallo, a native of Caraccas, and then an obscure _Garde
du Corps_. The rapid promotion of that young man, and the display of
wealth and splendour which he began to make, explained the source of
his advancement to every one but the King. Godoy himself seems to
have been stung with jealousy, probably not so much from his rival’s
share in the Queen’s affections, as from the ill-concealed vanity
of the man, whose sole aim was to cast into shade the whole Court.
Once, as the King and Queen, attended by Godoy and other grandees of
the household, were standing at the balcony of the royal seat El
Pardo, Mallo appeared at a distance, driving four beautiful horses,
and followed by a brilliant retinue. The King’s eye was caught by the
beauty of the equipage, and he inquired to whom it belonged. Hearing
that it was Mallo’s--“I wonder,” he said, “how that fellow can afford
to keep such horses.”--“Why, please your Majesty,” replied Godoy,
“the scandal goes, that he himself is kept by an ugly old woman--I
quite forget her name.”
Mallo’s day of prosperity was but short. His vanity, coxcombry
and folly, displeased the King, and alarmed the Queen. But in the
first ardour of her attachments, she generally had the weakness of
committing her feelings to writing; and Mallo possessed a collection
of her letters. Wishing to rid herself of that absurd, vain fop, and
yet dreading an exposure, she employed Godoy in the recovery of her
written tokens. Mallo’s house was surrounded with soldiers in the
dead of night; and he was forced to yield the precious manuscripts
into the hands of his rival. The latter, however, was too well aware
of their value to deliver them to the writer; and he is said to keep
them as a powerful charm, if not to secure his mistress’s affection,
at least to subdue her fits of fickleness and jealousy. Mallo was
soon banished and forgotten.
The two ministers, Saavedra and Jovellanos, had been rusticated to
their native provinces; the first, on account of ill health; the
second, from the Queen’s unconquerable dislike. Urquijo, who seems
to have been unable either to gain the King’s esteem, or fully to
return the Queen’s affection, could keep his post no longer than
while the latter’s ever ready fondness for Godoy, was not awakened
by the presence of its object. The absence of the favourite, it
is generally believed, might have been prolonged, by good policy,
and management of the King on the part of Urquijo, if his rashness
and conceit of himself had ever allowed him to suspect that any
influence whatever, was equal to that of his talents and person.
Instead of strongly opposing a memorial of the Prince of the Peace,
asking permission to kiss their majesties’ hands upon the birth of a
daughter, borne to him by the Princess his wife, Urquijo imagined the
Queen so firmly attached to himself, that he conceived no danger from
this transient visit of his offended rival. Godoy made his appearance
at Court; and from that moment Urquijo’s ruin became inevitable.
His hatred of the Court of Rome had induced the latter to encourage
the translation of a Portuguese work, against the extortions of the
Italian _Dataria_, in cases of dispensations for marriage within the
prohibited degrees. Thinking the public mind sufficiently prepared
by that work, he published a royal mandate to the Spanish bishops,
urging them to resume their ancient rights of dispensation. This step
had armed against its author the greater part of the clergy; and the
Prince of the Peace found it easy to alarm the King’s conscience by
means of the Pope’s nuncio, Cardinal _Casoni_, who made him believe
that his minister had betrayed him into a measure which trespassed
upon the rights of the Roman Pontiff. I believe that Godoy’s growing
dislike of the Inquisition spared Urquijo the horrors of a dungeon
within its precincts. He had not, however, sufficient generosity to
content himself with the banishment of his enemy to Guipuzcoa. An
order for his imprisonment in a fortress followed him thither in
a short time--a circumstance, which might raise a suspicion that
Urquijo had employed his personal liberty to make a second attempt
against the recalled favourite.
This supposition would be strongly supported by the general mildness
of Godoy’s administration, if one instance of cruel and implacable
revenge were not opposed to so favourable a view of his conduct.
Whether the Queen represented Jovellanos to the Prince of the Peace
as the chief actor in the first plot which was laid against him,
or that he charged that venerable magistrate with ingratitude for
taking any share in a conspiracy against the man who had raised him
to power; Godoy had scarcely been restored to his former influence,
when he procured an order to confine Jovellanos in the Carthusian
Convent of Majorca. The unmanliness of this second and long-meditated
blow, roused the indignation of his fallen and hitherto silent
adversary, calling forth that dauntless and dignified inflexibility
which makes him, in our days, so fine a specimen of the old Spanish
character. From his confinement he addressed a letter to the King,
exposing the injustice of his treatment in terms so removed from the
servile tone of a Spanish memorial, so regardless of the power of
his adversary, that it kindled anew the resentment of the favourite,
through whose hands he well knew it must make its way to the throne.
Such a step was more likely to aggravate than to obtain redress for
his wrongs. The virtues, the brilliant talents, and pleasing address
of Jovellanos had so gained upon the affections of the monks, that
they treated him with more deference than even a minister in the
height of his power could have expected. Godoy’s spirit of revenge
could not brook his enemy’s enjoyment of this small remnant of
happiness; and with a cruelty which casts the blackest stain on his
character, he removed him to a fortress in the same island, where,
under the control of an illiterate and rude governor, Jovellanos
is deprived of all communication, and limited to a small number of
books for his mental enjoyment. The character of the gaoler may be
conceived from the fact of his not being able to distinguish a _work_
from a _volume_. Jovellanos’s friends are not allowed to relieve his
solitude with a variety of books, even to the number contained in
the governor’s instructions; for he reckons literary works by the
piece, and a good edition of Cicero, for instance, appears to him a
complete library.[51]
[51] See Note K.
Since his restoration to favour, the Prince of the Peace has been
gradually and constantly gaining ascendancy. The usual titles
of honour being exhausted upon him, the antiquated dignity of
_High-Admiral_ has been revived and conferred upon him, just at the
time when your tars have left us without a navy. Great emoluments,
and the address of _Highness_ have been annexed to this dignity.
A brigade of cavalry, composed of picked men from the whole army,
has been lately given to the High-Admiral as a guard of honour.
His power, in fine, though delegated, is unlimited, and he may be
properly said to be the acting Sovereign of Spain. The King, by the
unparalleled elevation of this favourite, has obtained his heart’s
desire in a perfect exemption from all sorts of employment, except
shooting, to which he exclusively devotes every day of the year.
Soler, the minister of finance, is employed to fleece the people; and
Caballero, in the home department, to keep them in due ignorance and
subjection. I shall just give you a sample of each of these worthies’
minds and principles.--It has been the custom for centuries at
Valladolid to make the Dominican Convent of that town a sort of bank
for depositing sums of money, as it was done in the ancient temples,
under similar circumstances of ignorance, of commerce and insecurity
of property. Soler, being informed that the monks held in their
hands a considerable deposit, declared “that it was an injury to the
state to allow so much money to lie idle,” and seizing it, probably
for the Queen, whose incessant demands form the most pressing and
considerable item of the Spanish budget, gave government-paper to the
monks, which the creditors might sell, if they chose, at eighty per
cent. discount.--Caballero, fearing the progress of all learning,
which might disturb the peace of the Court, sent, not long since, a
circular order to the Universities, forbidding the study of moral
philosophy: “His Majesty,” it was said in the order, “was not in want
of philosophers, but of good and obedient subjects.”
Under the active operation of this system, the Queen has the command
of as much money and patronage as she desires; and finding it
impracticable to check the gallantries of her _cher ami_, has so
perfectly conquered her jealousy as to be able not only to be on the
most amicable terms with him, but to emulate his love of variety in
the most open and impudent manner.
I wish to have done with the monstrous heap of scandal, which the
state of our Court has unavoidably forced into my narrative. Much,
indeed, I leave untold; but I cannot omit an original and perfectly
authentic story, which, as it explains the mystery of the King’s
otherwise inexplicable blindness respecting his wife’s conduct,
justice requires to be made public. The world shall see that his
Majesty’s apathy does not arise from any disgraceful indifference
for what is generally considered by men as a vital point of honour;
but that the peace and tranquillity of his mind is grounded on a
philosophical system--I do not know whether physical or moral--which
is, I believe, peculiar to himself.
The old Duke del I---- (on the authority of whose lady I give you
the anecdote) was once, with other grandees, in attendance on the
King, when his Majesty, being in high gossiping humour, entered into
a somewhat gay conversation on the fair sex. He descanted, at some
length, on fickleness and caprice, and laughed at the dangers of
husbands in these southern climates. Having had his fill of merriment
on the subject of jealousy, he concluded with an air of triumph--“We,
_crowned heads_, however, have this chief advantage above others,
that our honour, as they call it, is safe; for suppose that queens
were as much bent on mischief as some of their sex, where could they
find kings and emperors to flirt with? Eh?”