The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-05-11
Queen Isabella's Dwarf.

queen ISaDella Dwarf.
near the Arc de Tromphe, lives little
man who is Tom Thumbs inferior in
height-and, therefore, his superior in
dwarfish merit-by the full thickness of
q pocket volume. He has ready wit, an
intelligent face, dresses carefully, and
has plenty of money, and his turnout is,
if not one of the most splendid, at least
one of the neatest in Paris. He drives
pony not much larger than Newfound
land dog, in trap that reminds you of
the vehicles to which the goats are har-
messed in the Champs Elysees. Every
thing is in keeping about him, with the
exception of his cigar, and that being of
the ordinary size is big enough to serve
him for a walking-stick He has an es-
tablishment, and his servants (who, it
must be confessed, are as much out of
keeping as the weed, being of the COM
mon stature) seem to treat him with the
most profound respect. 1t is not to be
wondered at, for, to say nothing Of the
fact that he is their master, the gentle
man in question is no less person in
dignity than the ex-dwarf of Her ex-
Majesty the Queen of Spain.
Before her downfall Isabella always
kept dwarf, if only to show her regard
for the ways of her predecessors on the
Spanish throne. To judge by what one
sees in the picture gallery at Madrid a
Spanish court would have been only more
incomplete without monarch than with
out a monster. There is the King and
there is the pygmy-the latter often in
the same picture and always close at
hand. Sometimes he shows sad face,
as of one forever murmuring at fortune
for having made him greater than other
men only because nature had made him
immeasurably less; sometimes he seems
pleasantly pulled up with a sense of self
importance, as though he understood the
royal 1--WE" to include himself and his
master. Many a Minister of State is
missing from the gallery, but there
seems to be no break in the pictorial sue
cession of dwarfs. When these pictures
were painted nearly every court in Europe
had curiosity of this description, and
the little men were so highly priced that
they were among the few objects of in
terest which princes could present to one
another. But the demand for them grad
ually ceased as common sense spread up
wards from the people to their rulers; the
French Revolution brought it almost to
a standstill, and the diminutive courtiers
went into limbo with the last remnants
of feudalism. One court, however, con-
tinued to give them an asylum; and the
small gentleman who now lives here so
pleasantly shared the confidence of Isa
bella with Marjori and the Bleeding Nun,
and accompanied her in her hasty flight
from the capital.
He left one palace only to find shelter
in another. The Queen had laid by for a
rainy day, and her Partisan exile was
only less splendid than her state at Mad
rid. He had a suite Of apartments given
him in the regal mansion in the Avenue
du Roi de Rome, and at a fixed hour
every morning be was admitted to the
room of his benefactress with the lapdog
and the parrot, both brought, like himself,
with no little difficulty, across the from
tier in those trying moments when the
Queen had to surrender everything but
what was absolutely indispensable to her
comfort. He was of use to Her Majesty
in q thousand ways; his wit enter
tanned her, and her favorite morning s
Amusement was to see him make sport Of
the old Ministers who had contributed to
her downfall, or of the new ones who
were serving the Provisional Government
ct Madrid His speeches la CASTELAR,
we're highly relished; and he somehow
used to contrive to look tall for the pur-
pose of caricaturing the gait and bearing
of Figueras: When the latter undertook
his desperate journey to Barcelona to
Quiet the Catalonian intransigentes, with
ROGUE Barcia in his train, the dwarf made
. great hit by appearing before his mis-
tress one day all in red and carrying .
puppet (made up in rude imitation of the
Republican Minister), of which he pulled
the strings to symbolic the relations be-
tween Figueras and his unwelcome asso-
cis1e. This representation was much aP-
plauded, and the news Of it went the
roupd Of Paris in all circles in which the
rovai family was known. Poor King
Anadeus, Who bad previously Left the