With whom my former
friends, Galiano and Isturitz, had little or no influence. These
gentlemen were now regularly laid on the shelf, and their political
career appeared to be terminated for ever.
From the present ministry I could expect but little; they consisted
of men, the greater part of whom had been either courtiers or
employes of the deceased King Ferdinand, who were friends to
absolutism, and by no means inclined to do or to favour anything
calculated to give offence to the court of Rome, which they were
anxious to conciliate, hoping that eventually it might be induced
to recognize the young queen, not as the constitutional but as the
absolute Queen Isabella the Second.
Such was the party which continued in power throughout the
remainder of my sojourn in Spain, and which persecuted me less from
rancour and malice than from policy. It was not until the
conclusion of the war of the succession that it lost the
ascendancy, when it sank to the ground with its patroness the
queen-mother, before the dictatorship of Espartero.
The first step which I took after my return to Madrid, towards
circulating the Scriptures, was a very bold one. It was neither
more nor less than the establishment of a shop for the sale of
Testaments.
