Ferdinand assented, provided his father would really reign, and would dismiss those advisers who were hated by the nation; but the attempt to impose conditions called forth a flash of senile wrath, along with the remark that "one ought to do everything _for_ the people and nothing _by_ the people." Meanwhile the men of Madrid were not acting with the passivity desired by their philosophizing monarch.

At first they had welcomed Murat as delivering them from the detested yoke of Godoy; but the conduct of the French in their capital, and the detention of Ferdinand at Bayonne, aroused angry feelings, which burst forth on May the 2nd, and long defied the grapeshot of Murat's guns and the sabres of his troopers.

The news of this so-called revolt gave Napoleon another handle against his guests.

He hurried to Charles and cowed him by well-simulated signs of anger, which that _roi faineant_ thereupon vented on his son, with a passion that was outdone only by the shrill gibes of the Queen.

At the close of this strange scene, the Emperor interposed with a few stern words, threatening to treat the prince as a rebel if he did not that very evening restore the crown to his father.