When my mother died, I was able to get wholly clear of the formalities of Court life, and I left the Palais to rent an apartment for myself where I could live like a private person, with my maids, without even a lady-in-waiting. I bought a few acres of land on the seashore of my beloved Normandy, and built myself a summer cottage cooled by the happy breezes that I had known as a child. And here I can say, and do, and think, and write what I please, untroubled by the prohibitions of crowned heads, who can enforce no command on me and impose no punishment--except to deny me an entrance to Courts from which I have been only too glad to escape. When my first little book was about to be published, the King of Spain wired me that I could not publish it without his consent. I repudiated that control of my liberty, and they threatened to deprive me of my title and the small income that comes with it. I was puzzled to know what they would decide to call me, if not “the Infanta Eulalia”; and I was interested to see if the King would set a precedent for depriving the “inviolable” Royal Family of its titles and its property by legislative enactment. He decided, wisely, to let the matter drop, and I heard no more of it. It is my final realisation of freedom that I celebrate now in these pages. I have escaped, mind and body, from my gilded cage. It has taken a lifetime, but it was worth it. I have no respect for anything in the world except intelligence. I live in France because it is the most intelligent of all the countries I have known. I have seen the world waking to the fact that the rule of money is no better than the rule of rank, except when it is more intelligent; and I can foresee the day when the inequalities of property will have no more authority than the inequalities of rank to oppress mankind. I read and write to keep my own intelligence in health by exercising it. And I am afraid of no critic except the one who may find my intelligence feeble, with a prison pallor, in spite of its joy in its escape. CHAPTER XIII AFTER THE WAR What interests--fascinates--the student of contemporary humanity rather than of contemporary politics is to what extent the war will either advance or set us back as a civilisation; shall we be better for it, will life be better for it? I have always had a horror of war. I hoped and thought up to the last moment that it would be averted. It seemed impossible that France and Germany could come to blows; the cost looked to be too big. Yet I see the Kaiser swept away by the war party behind him, urged by that mysticism, which always characterised him, to believe that war was a divine duty. This is the only reason I can find for his declaration. He loved to preach and pray and live and talk among the stars. The impulse of religious fervour ran riot in him, and he persuaded himself that to plunge the world into the most horrible war of all time was his divine mission.