Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/351

 movement. It was by no means Prim alone whose course of life presented so checkered a spectacle. Many of his contemporaries who had achieved prominence in the state, Espartero, Narvaez, Serrano, Ros de Olano, O'Donnell, Manuel and José Concha, Olozaga, and others, had passed through similar vicissitudes. There was hardly a public man of note who had not at some time been a conspirator or a revolutionist.

When I met Prim he was about forty-seven years old, an elegant figure of middle height; a rather handsome, black-bearded, soldierly face, with flashing eyes; quick and elastic in his movements; frank and jovial in his address and manners. I saw him at a military review, mounted on a superb Andalusian charger, at the head of his staff, the very picture of a splendid chieftain to be admired by the multitude and idolized by his men. The liberal political ideas he professed, identified him with the Progresista party, and gave him a wide popularity with the masses. Some persons suspected that his elevation to the dignity of a grandee of Spain had somewhat gone to his head; but this was a mere surmise. It certainly did not change his utterances on political subjects. But he lived in princely style. His expenditures were magnificent, and the management of his private affairs careless in the extreme. He married a Mexican heiress of great wealth, dissipated her available means in an amazingly short time, and then ran recklessly into debt. He was known to be overburdened with financial liabilities, and sorely in want of money for current requirements. The financial element was considered an important one in the situation of a Spanish statesman who at the same time was a popular general.

When the plan of an expedition against Mexico first appeared before the public, it was reported that General Serrano,