When the revolution of ’68 first disturbed my life--and the parrot’s--I was too young to know it. The intelligence was still unformed, the body infantile. But both the body and the mind had been born of a race so old and in traditions so established that it would seem no revolution could affect them. For many hundreds of years a few families of human beings had been inheriting the thrones of Europe, generation after generation, as families inherit property, from parents to children, by the consent of society and under the protection of law. They were by birth “Royal,” as persons may be, in democracies, by birth wealthy. And they were born to rule as unquestionably as the children of the poor to-day are born to poverty. They were spoken of as “Blood Royal,” as if they were of special flesh, and they intermarried only with Blood Royal, because the people whom they governed demanded children of this special flesh to sit on the thrones of their countries. A king here or a queen there might lose a crown by bad management, or misfortune, or the ill-will of subjects, as a man might lose an inherited estate by similar causes; but he could not lose his place among the families of Royalty (with whom he and his children had intermarried) nor the honours of Courts and the respect of peoples who still obeyed members of the ruling families into which he had been born. So, since I had been born into one of these families--the Bourbon--the essentials of my life were as little changed by the revolution of ’68 as the parrot’s were. We both remained in our cages. My mother, leaving Spain, came to Paris, to live in the Palais de Castile with her children, a Queen in exile, but still a Queen; Napoleon III. extended the hospitality of the nation to her; and she continued to move among ceremonies and Court functions after the manner royal. Of all this I recall almost nothing. I have a vague memory of Napoleon III. making us a visit, and I remember that the young Prince Napoleon came to play with my brother and my sisters, who were older than I. I can recall our flight from Paris, when it was about to be besieged by the Prussians, for I was ill with measles and I was carried downstairs wrapped in a blanket, and I saw, somewhere on our journey to Normandy, German soldiers with helmets as our carriage passed them. But these are recollections of the eyes alone; they mean nothing.