Roundup

The bells of "Madrid's venerable Town Hall pealed out a quarter to midnight. In front of the unpretentious apartment house at No. 10 Calle de la Vega the night watchman banged his stick on the sidewalk, clanked a ring of keys, then unlocked the door for a party of four plainclothesmen. The visitors walked up the stairs to the apartment of Don Bernardo Bernardez, 63, respected executive of the Banco Iberico and well-known elder of Spain's monarchist movement.

The policemen searched the apartment, gathered up a bundle of papers. Don Bernardo crammed a change of underwear and a blanket into a shabby satchel. To his distressed family (a wife and six children at home; four other children elsewhere), the old man said: "Don't worry about me. I will be back soon. I have committed no crimes." Then he was led off to jail.

A Hundred Children. Francisco Franco's government, after years of tight-lipped toleration of the anti-Franco monarchists, was cracking down. The dictator's police gave no explanations, made no charges. But by week's end it had jailed incommunicado more than 30 members of the militant monarchist faction, Avan-zadilla Monarquica.

It looked as if Franco had finally decided that the monarchists had become more dangerous to his regime than the

Communists. In recent months an anti-Franco front has been taking shape. Excluding the Communists, but taking in all other opposition groups, it would accept the monarchist program for a government headed by Pretender Don Juan; later there would be a plebiscite for a new Spanish constitution.

Banker Bernardez had been the head of the Avanzadilla brain trust, and a shrewd political adviser to Leader Luisa Maria, 34, the handsome, impetuous Duchess of Valencia. Cautious and levelheaded, the old man kept the organization running in spite of its hotheads. "I have ten children of my own," he would say, his blue eyes twinkling, "so I can easily manage a hundred more."

A Patrician Rebel. When the duchess heard of Bernardez' arrest, she still had time to flee. Instead, she chose to stay. When she was nine and a convent student, Luisa Maria had upset a plate of bean soup in protest against the quality of convent food. Reprimanded, she upset the inkwell on the mother superior's desk. Last week, still a rebel, the duchess made the rounds of Madrid's foreign embassies and newsmen, hoping that publicity would help her arrested friends.

Hatless, her curls flying, she motored to the Associated Press office near the Puerta de Alcala. When her black Cadillac convertible (with ducal escutcheon enameled on its door) halted, a taxi pulled up just behind. From it hurried two men in the typical trench coats of the secret police. They blocked Luisa Maria's way. "Duchess," one of them said, "you must come along with us. The chief of police wants to have a talk with you at once."

The rebel tossed her curls, then turned to her white-faced chauffeur. "There now, Felix," she said. "Don't look so worried. Go on home and send me my prison kit. Take good-care of the dogs. Everything will be all right."

Then she drove off with her captors. Later she was taken to Las Ventas women's prison on Madrid's outskirts. Her butler stood waiting with her "prison kit," a large suitcase containing grey flannel slacks, leather jacket, woolen undies, sleeping bag, cologne water and salmon silk pajamas. The duchess has been jailed four times since 1947, always keeps her kit ready.

As the servant, tears in his eyes, handed over the suitcase, his mistress inquired: "Ricardo, are you sure my silk pajamas are there? Prison is a beastly place and I don't want to lose my femininity."

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