We found a man dying of some sort of fever, lying on his back in bed, with a holy candle burning on his forehead--to improve his temperature, no doubt. He opened his eyes at our entrance; and when he saw the unearthly apparition of the princess in bright green, with the hair and face of a soul in purgatory and a blaze of glory about her head; he sat up in bed with a shriek, pointed his shaking hand at her, and cried “Booh!” That was all I saw. I got down on my knees, helpless with hysterical laughter, and covered my face with my hands. When the ceremony was over, I hurried out as best I could and went to pieces in the carriage. The man died that night. One would think it was not very sanitary to be making such visits to fatal cases of disease. And it was not. We went once to the death-bed of a smallpox patient and knelt on pillows that had been under his head. But the Spanish people seem to have a vitality that is proof against infection; and in the South of Spain particularly they live to incredible old age. CHAPTER V MY MARRIAGE--IN MOURNING I suppose that no one who has not lived at a Court will believe how narrow in its interests the royal life can be. It is the life of a little family isolated by an impervious etiquette from the immensities of life that are about it. One can read, and hear, and be aware of the life of the nation at second hand; one can not approach it intimately. And the little family revolves upon itself, with its own gossip, its own scandal, its own jealousies and ambitions, its own jokes, and its own quarrels, in a kind of royal cloister, surrounded by invisible walls. During those first years of my brother’s reign, laws were passed, debates were conducted, the Liberals and Conservatives struggled together for office, elections were held, revolts were put down. I heard nothing of it. Or if I did, it made so little impression on my interest that it made none on my memory. I remember that now the famous Premier Sagasta would be at the palace daily, and now his famous rival, Canovas; but that was politics merely; and politics were to us princesses what business would be to the daughters of an American millionaire. The entourage that surrounded us in the palace of Madrid went with us to the mountains when the Court removed to the summer palace of La Granja, which is the Versailles of Spain, and modelled after Versailles. There we fished and hunted and rode and made excursions like a house-party at an English country seat. And when we went to Santander for the sea-bathing, it was the same. The same people accompanied us, the same routine of life engaged us, the same round of interests confined our minds.