And before long the Spanish young men came to bore me as much as their sisters. They had only one conversation for a woman--the romantically sentimental, exaggerated to the point of foolishness. It was too silly. If they were not pretending that they were blighted with melancholy because of your unearthly charms, they were assuring you that they would shed their blood for you. I did not want to see their blood, but their brains; and they either had none or did not consider it necessary to use them in their conversation with a princess. In the evenings I often went to the opera, but my brother had no ear at all for music; he could not tell the Royal March when it was played; and he complained that the singing depressed him like the howling of a dog. So I went with my sisters and some older chaperon. One night, on our way to the opera, we had an adventure that could happen only in Spain. There, whenever the priest is summoned to attend the dying, he takes the sacrament and sets out on foot, accompanied by an attendant with a little bell. The first carriage that he meets, even if it be a hired hack, is stopped at the sound of the bell and he is invited to ride. If the hack then meets a private carriage of more luxury, it is the privilege of the owner to take the priest into his vehicle. And if the Royal carriage is met, the Royalty not only take the priest with them, but they are expected to follow into the house of the dying, and kneel in the death-chamber while the last rites are being performed. On this night I was in our carriage with a princess who was most gorgeously arrayed in a bright green evening gown ornamented with silver, with a great display of jewels on her corsage, and on her head a huge rayed ornament of diamonds in the shape of a diadem. Her hair was prematurely grey and rather wild. She had been riding in the sun, and her face was flushed. She was an enormous woman--so large that she had to give up horseback-riding because it became impossible to find a horse capable of carrying her. We were scarcely well away from the palace when we heard approaching us the bell of the sacrament, and I said to her, hurriedly, “We can’t go to a death-bed in this finery. I’ll make the driver turn round.” But she was very religious. It was a sacrilege to her to turn our backs on the Host. In spite of my protests, we met the priest, took him into the carriage, and drove him to his destination. There the princess and I followed him into the death-chamber, devoutly, though with very doubtful feelings on my part.