My first impression, of course, was of the heat. Immediately on my arrival I was visited by a physician, who came to warn me of all the diseases I might catch, and to tell me of all the things that I must do and must not do to avoid them. It was terrifying to listen to him. I had insisted on having cold drinks, and he was sure that cold drinks would be fatal. I had been installed in the palace of the _capitan general_, and I was going about on the marble floors in my stockinged feet to be cooler. This also I was told was dangerous. “Well,” I said at last, “if I don’t cool myself down, I shall surely die of the heat, anyway, so what matter?” And I decided to do what I wanted and let my natural vitality take care of the consequences. Because of this policy I made what appears to have been a startling impression of energy on the Cubans. There is nothing more popular than energy in a royal person--perhaps because it is so unexpected. I had, for once, the good luck to please by doing what I pleased. The heat was so great on my first night in the palace that I could not sleep, and being by no means fat, and my bed being without springs--just the stretched canvas of a “petate” fastened on a bed frame--I ached with the hard discomforts of it. At two in the morning I demanded a mattress. My maid sent for one. After a half-hour of waiting a young aide-de-camp appeared, in full uniform, and when I asked why _he_ had come, he replied: “But it is I who have made your bed; if it is wrong, I must fix it.” I roared. He explained that in order to have the bed prepared with all possible care for me, it had been decided that an officer should make it. I told him to send me a mattress, and go back to his sleep. My maid, a simple old soul, was in a state of distraction. “My poor Infanta! My poor Infanta!” she kept wailing. “What will become of her, with no one but these stupid men to look after her!”