Free Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana Page A

Queen María Luisa at first hand. He had glimpsed her before, when she had visited Mallo in the house Esteban shared with him.Disguised in a monk’s cape, slipping furtively into her lover’s quarters, the woman would not have inspired particular awe in a boy. But here, in the glittering halls of the royal palace, there was no question that she was a powerful presence. Surrounded by toadies, ruling her courtiers by whim, she cut a formidable figure with her grim face and flamboyant silk gowns. In a portrait painted within a year of Bolívar’s arrival, Francisco de Goya captured the queen’s frightening amalgam of debauchery and cunning. Even then, judging by Goya’s candid and openly satirical depiction, her critics were legion.“There is no woman on earth who lies with more composure or is as treacherous,” a respected diplomat in Madrid wrote. “Her simple observations become irrevocable law. She sacrifices the best interests of the crown to her low, scandalous vices.” Now, with her empire beset, her lust too much in evidence, her very teeth marred by decay, the queen’s corruption cannot have been lost on the young man from the Indies. He was acquiring an education befitting a Spanish nobleman, but he was also learning how fragile the construct of monarchies could be.
    Henry Adams, a great chronicler of the times, described the fatuousness of the Spanish court in his History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison:
    The Queen’s favorite in the year 1800 was a certain Mallo, whom she was said to have enriched, and who, according to the women of the bed-chamber, physically beat Her Majesty as though she were any common Maritornes. One day in that year, when Godoy had cometo pay his respects to the King, and as usual was conversing with him in the Queen’s presence, Charles asked him a question: “Manuel,” said the King, “what is it with this Mallo? I see him with new horses and carriages every day. Where does he get so much money?” “Sire,” replied Godoy, “Mallo has nothing in the world; but he is kept by an ugly old woman who robs her husband to pay her lover.” The King shouted with laughter, and turning to his wife, said: “Luisa, what think you of that?” “Ah, Charles!” she replied; “don’t you know that Manuel is always joking?”
    One afternoon, Bolívar made a trip to the palace to visit the queen’s fifteen-year-old son, Prince Ferdinand, the future king. Ferdinand had invited him to a game of badminton. In the heat of one of their volleys, Simón’s shuttlecock landed on the prince’s head, and the young monarch, incensed and humiliated, refused to continue. The queen, who had been watching all the while, insisted that Ferdinand go on, instructing him to comport himself like a good host.“How could Ferdinand VII possibly have known,” Bolívar commented twenty-seven years later, “that the accident was an omen that some day I would wrest the most precious jewel from his crown?”
    At about the same time, in February of 1800,Esteban and Pedro moved out of their apartment on Calle de los Jardines and left Madrid altogether, wanting to distance themselves from a mounting problem. It’s not entirely clear why, but it is reasonable to assume that they had come under suspicion as the century turned, power shifted in court, two prime ministers came and went, and the queen’s lover was taken for what he was: a simple gigolo. It might also have been due to the queen herself, who was highly jealous, inclined to suspect that Mallo was disloyal and had mistresses elsewhere. In any case, Esteban was arrested and put in prison—an unremarkable eventuality in those convoluted times—and Pedro proceeded to make himself scarce, spending much of his time in Cádiz. The Marquis of Ustáriz, a proud pillar in that increasingly venal city, became Bolívar’s sole anchor.
    But by then young Simón had a very pressing distraction: he had fallen in