scornful, with a comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his
breast a heart blighted by a hopeless passion for his beautiful
cousin, married to a wealthy hide and tallow merchant. He used to
take us to lunch at their house without ceremony. I admired the
good lady's sweet patience. The husband was a conciliatory soul,
with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on "Roger's
friends." I suspect he was secretly horrified at these invasions.
But it was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome. The
possibility of raising Catalonia in the interest of the Rey netto,
who had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.

Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the
common lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more
extravagantly fantastic than the Tremolino Syndicate, which used to
meet in a tavern on the quays of the old port. The antique city of
Massilia had surely never, since the days of the earliest
Phoenicians, known an odder set of ship-owners. We met to discuss
and settle the plan of operations for each voyage of the Tremolino.
In these operations a banking-house, too, was concerned--a very
respectable banking-house. But I am afraid I shall end by saying
too much. Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really afraid I am
saying too much)--all sorts of ladies, some old enough to know
better than to put their trust in princes, others young and full of
illusions.

One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave
us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was
perpetually rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of
the cause--Por el Rey! For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood
at that, with something of a lioness in the expression of her