Padilla when she had lived at the Alcazar; and I had longed to have it filled with water so that I might use it. The officer told me that once, after Maria Padilla had bathed there, Pedro the Cruel, in a jest, had invited a courtier to drink some of the water to show his devotion, and the courtier replied, “I’m afraid if I tried the sauce, I might get a taste for the partridge.” I thought this very clever of the courtier, and I repeated the story to my governess, after dinner, and she was horrified. It was the last opportunity I got to speak with the officer. And I did not get the bath. Indeed, at that time it was difficult to get a bath of any sort, except a sponge bath, piecemeal. The ladies-in-waiting declared that it was sinful to bathe; and when I laughed at that they argued that it was indelicate to take off all one’s clothing at once. (I imagine that their antipathy to bathing must have come from the feeling against the Moors, who had so long been the conquerors in Sevilla, since it was part of their religion to bathe.) I finally got my way by persuading a doctor to give orders that I must have cold baths for my health. These, then, were some of the material restrictions of our life. The mental restrictions were even more hopeless. There were no books to be had. If I wrote a letter, it had to be read by the lady-in-waiting to whom I gave it to post. We had an old professor to give us lessons in Spanish, and we studied painting and music, and acquired the ornamental accomplishments and fundamental ignorances of young ladies who are not expected to have minds and not allowed to develop any. Religious instruction went on always. We heard Mass in the palace every day, and we should have had to go to confession and communion every day, too, if I had not insisted that I would not go oftener than once a month. My sisters were both most devout, and they did not sympathise with my rebelliousness. When I complained of the imprisonment of our lives, they counselled me, affectionately, to bow to the will of God and to accept with pious resignation the trials to which Providence had appointed us. I should have been happier, no doubt, if I could have done so; but Providence had also appointed for me a temperament that made resignation impossible, and I continued to obey the will of God by chafing and complaining and struggling to escape.