Stirring times had reigned in this country for a hundred years.

Ferdinand VII--the beloved, the dupe of Napoleon the Great, the god of all Spain from Irun to San Roque, and one of the thorough-paced scoundrels whom God has permitted to sit on a throne--had bequeathed to his country a legacy of strife, which was now bearing fruit.
For not only Aragon, but all Spain was at this time in the most unfortunate position in which a nation or a man--and, above all, a woman--can find herself--she did not know what she wanted.
On one side was Catalonia, republican, fiery, democratic, and independent; on the other, Navarre, more priest-ridden than Rome herself, with every man a Carlist and every woman that which her confessor told her to be.

In the south, Andalusia only asked to be left alone to go her own sunny, indifferent way to the limbo of the great nations.

Which way should Aragon turn?
In truth, the men of Aragon knew not themselves.
Stirring times indeed; for the news had just penetrated to far remote Lerida that the two greatest nations of Europe were at each other's throats.

It was a long cry from Ems to Lerida, and the talkers on the shady side of the market-place knew little of what was passing on the banks of the Rhine.
Stirring times, too, were nearer at hand across the Mediterranean.