There are so many beautiful Italian cities in which agreeable society may be enjoyed that had one to choose one in which to live permanently it would be difficult to come to a decision. Venice is one of the most adorable, and the time I spent with the Duke and Duchess of Genoa at the King’s palace there was a dream of delight. But there is one objection, and that a serious one to a prolonged stay in Venice, and that is the difficulty of getting proper exercise. As everybody seemed prepared to spoil me when I was there, I made it clear that it was essential for me to do something more vigorous than gliding down silent canals in a gondola or strolling in the Piazza. It was therefore arranged that I should play tennis at the Arsenal, and that indulgence gave me the one thing that seemed lacking in the charming life of the city. Italians can play tennis very well when they choose, and Monsignor Montagnini, the Papal Legate who was turned out of France when diplomatic relations between the Republic and the Vatican were ruptured, was a case in point. He played an excellent game, and we often had a set together in Paris. Little did I guess what his means were, and never will I forget his false behaviour when his papers were captured. In Venice too, I found some good players, and so managed to get the vigorous exercise I needed. Apart from this, I lived the life of the Venetians--walked in the Piazza from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, took the air in a gondola about half-past five, went occasionally to the opera at the Fenice, that most exquisite of theatres, and ended the day by dancing in the enchanted palaces that rise from the sea. It was often sunrise when I stepped into a Royal barge with gondoliers in scarlet and, to the rhythmic music of oars that cut the water and the splash of the spray that fell from their blades, floated through the rosy dawn to the Royal palace. CHAPTER XII ADVENTURES IN AMERICA It was during these years of travel in Europe that I was offered the opportunity of going to America to represent the Throne of Spain at the World’s Fair that was to be held in Chicago to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery. I accepted the invitation with joy. I had no longer my childish idea that if I could only take a boat and sail to America I should be really “free”; but I had still in my mind the household saying that I was “only fit for America,” and I felt sure that I should like the great democracy, and I was eager to see it. It was planned, also, that I should visit Cuba--in the usual administrative hope that a Royal visitor might revive the loyalty of a rebellious colony exasperated by misgovernment. The misgovernment was a thing for which the Royal Family was as little to blame as the Cubans themselves; but I was willing to be made use of, in one of the few ways that royalty can be of use in a constitutional monarchy, and I prepared to see--and be seen by--Cuba, too.