What adventures! I was most eager for history and philosophy, because my mind had been denied access to facts, and I read all that I could find, indiscriminately. It was probably my brother who directed me to Kant, his own education having been chiefly German, in Vienna. But my personal favourite among the philosophers was Emerson. I suppose it was his sturdy doctrine of self-reliance that appealed to me--his insisting that nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of one’s own mind--and, although I have not read him for years, I still remember him with the glow of my pleasure in his words. For poetry I had no appetite. French poetry seemed to me very light, without ideas. And fiction, English fiction particularly, to which my sisters were devoted, interested me but little. I wanted things to be true. I could not read Balzac; I do not know why. With Shakespeare I had an odd experience. We studied him with our governess to perfect our English, and of course I realised that his verse was beautiful; but when his kings and queens spoke their lines they seemed to me to be playing parts that had been written to make fun of the claims of Royalty. My governess was indignant when I told her that. She said it was not true; that the speeches were meant to be taken seriously. “But no!” I would cry. “Don’t you see? Shakespeare is making fun of us. He knew we were not so, but he could not tell it in those days. He is laughing at us. He knew it was absurd.” And when we read _Hamlet_ I argued with her: “There! He has made a mad prince who talks foolishness. If he had respected Royalty as much as you say, he would not have written it. If you have an idiot in your family, you do not let people see him. No; he is laughing at his pompous kings.” And my governess scolded in vain. I still feel the same about Shakespeare’s Royalties. Outside of my books I began to be most interested to understand the conditions in Spain itself. Why had there been a revolution? And why had my brother been called to the throne? I was told that my mother’s rule had been too “clerical”--that the priests had had too much power--and that when the Republicans had failed to provide a stable Government my brother had been welcomed as a liberal King. But the story of the way in which he came to be proclaimed seemed to contradict this reasonable explanation. The ladies of the Court, it appeared, had merely given money to soldiers in the army to cry “_Viva el Rey Alfonso!_” when General Martinez Campos called out to them one morning, “_Viva el Rey!_” General Campos had then telegraphed to my brother that the army had proclaimed him King. My brother admitted to me that he had received the telegram as an invitation to an adventure, and, being fond of adventures, he had accepted it.