IT was toward the beginning of the long century which is now drawing to a close. We do not know the exact year: we can only be certain that it was after 1804, and before 1808. Don Carlos IV still reigned in Spain — by the grace of God, according to the coins, and by the forgetfulness or especial grace of Bonaparte, according to the French bulletins. The other European sovereigns who were descendants of Luis XIV had already lost their crowns (and the chief of them his head) in the violent storm that had been raging in this ancient part of the world since 1789. Nor did the peculiarity that characterized our fatherland in those times stop here. The Soldier of the Revolution, the son of an obscure Corsican lawyer, the conqueror of Rivoli, of the Pyramids, of Marengo and of a hundred other battles, had just donned the crown of Charlemagne and completely transfigured Europe; creating and abolishing nations, wiping out frontiers, inventing dynasties and changing the shape, the name, the situation, the customs and even the dress of the villages through which he rode on his charger like an animated earthquake, or like the "Antichrist," as the powers of the North called him.... Nevertheless, our fathers (God rest their souls), far from hating or fearing him, amused themselves by extolling his extraordinary deeds, as if they had reference to a hero in a book of chivalry, or to things that take place on another planet — never in their wildest dreams fearing that he might some day take it into his head to come here and attempt the atrocities he had perpetrated in France, Italy, Germany and other countries.