And of all these, perhaps intrinsically the least interesting was
the meeting of the Sovereigns of France and Spain,—the principal observation which has resulted from the meeting being that the Emperor was punctual in making his visit and the Queen of Spain unpunctual by an hour—" exact in her unpunctuality," says an obscure correspondent, mysteriously hinting, we presume, that there was a " mark of, design " in her being sixty minutes late, rather than fifty or seventy. It is recorded that when the Emperor and Empress arrived at San Sebastian yesterday week, they were received " at the foot of the staircase" by Queen Isabella, that the Emperor kissed the Queen's hand, that the Empress embraced the Queen, and that then, accompanied by the children of both families, they appeared on the balcony to be cheered, Isabella herself lifting the hope of the French dynasty on to a chair that the crowd might see him. On Monday the Queen returned the visit to Biarritz, when she was an hour late, and kept the Emperor waiting to receive her, after which he and the Empress escorted her to Bayonne. On these momentous facts it has been unfor- tunately necessary this week to ground disquisitions as to the first Napoleon's folly in invading Spain, and the third Napoleon's sagacity in perceiving that this was a mistake.
