At luncheons, when the officers ate with us, even sighs were impossible; and they behaved like very good boys before the school-teacher. My own behaviour must have betrayed amused interest, for I remember that our mistress of the robes--called the “_aya_”--who is a sort of Court duenna, read me long lectures on the government of my eyes. When a man conversed with me I must not look directly at him. That look, in Spain, meant courtship. I must always look down, and just glance at him sidelong, under the ends of my eyelashes, demurely. The Spanish girls do it very well, but my eyes were not Spanish. I had the habit of direct gaze; and after repeated lectures from the _aya_ I pretended that I had acquired a squint from trying to look sideways; and this annoyed the _aya_ and made fun for my brother. The Spanish girls are taught to regard men as some sort of wild animal, whom it is dangerous to meet unless one is well protected by chaperons; and they become as timid as Oriental girls, and, of course, as curious. Sometimes in the evenings, when my sisters and I were with my brother in his apartments, he would have with him young men of the Court, friends of his own age, grandees’ sons and members of the foreign legations, who went shooting and hunting with him. I enjoyed talking and listening to them, much more than conversing with the young ladies of noble families who were invited to Court as companions to us Infantas. The men had travelled, and read, and met interesting people. The girls had had no experiences and no thoughts. They could talk only of their religion or of their _fiancés_. They went to church for both. When a young Spaniard wished to begin courting he told the priest about it. The priest consulted the girl’s parents, and if the match was thought suitable, arrangements were made for her to attend certain Masses on certain mornings with her chaperon. Her official cavalier then posted himself somewhere near, made eyes at her during the service, and stood at the holy-water font when Mass was over, to offer her holy water as she went out. It was possible, also, to leave a letter at the church door with some old beggar, who would deliver it to the proper person in return for alms; but this correspondence was not for young girls. Their courting was carried on by means of devout looks, which were not required, one hopes, to be too oblique. I thought it very silly, and I said so; but the girls argued, piously, that since love was “a sacrament” it was right it should begin with holy water and benefit of clergy. I do not remember that the same argument was made for the intriguing ladies who carried on their correspondence through the beggars. As a matter of fact, the relations between the sexes were all wrong, since there could be no secure happiness based on such ignorance and Orientalism in a Western community, where the women can not be denied after marriage the liberty for which they are not prepared before that event.