guarding the rank and file of their novel pageant. It would be safe
to say that a droller sight never was seen, and never will be, on the
Pacific coast or any other. Before it was done with, the General
and his bride had nearly died with laughter; and the General could
never allude to it without laughing almost as heartily again.

At Monterey they were more magnificently feted; at the Presidio,
at the Mission, on board Spanish, Mexican, and Russian ships
lying in harbor, balls, dances, bull-fights, dinners, all that the
country knew of festivity, was lavished on the beautiful and
winning young bride. The belles of the coast, from San Diego up,
had all gathered at Monterey for these gayeties, but not one of
them could be for a moment compared to her. This was the
beginning of the Senora's life as a married woman. She was then
just twenty. A close observer would have seen even then,
underneath the joyous smile, the laughing eye, the merry voice, a
look thoughtful, tender, earnest, at times enthusiastic. This look
was the reflection of those qualities in her, then hardly aroused,
which made her, as years developed her character and stormy fates
thickened around her life, the unflinching comrade of her soldier
husband, the passionate adherent of the Church. Through wars,
insurrections, revolutions, downfalls, Spanish, Mexican, civil,
ecclesiastical, her standpoint, her poise, remained the same. She
simply grew more and more proudly, passionately, a Spaniard and
a Moreno; more and more stanchly and fierily a Catholic, and a
lover of the Franciscans.

During the height of the despoiling and plundering of the
Missions, under the Secularization Act, she was for a few years
almost beside herself. More than once she journeyed alone, when