Like the public warning, “Beware of Pickpockets,” in places of public resort, the drawing-rooms of Court society should put up the sign, “Beware of Diplomats.” The English representatives and the Scandinavians are not so fond of intrigue, but too many of the others are the official eavesdroppers and detectives of their Governments, and it is chiefly simple women who are their victims--women who can be blinded by pretended admiration and led into confidences that are indiscreet. It is not an occupation for a clever man, and few clever men remain in it long. The majority of those whom I have known were total idiots who would swallow absurdly wrong information without blinking and convey it eagerly to their home Governments without suspicion. I have tried it, to find out. And I found the typical conversation of diplomats all in one key of vanity: an assurance that when they were at one Court the king showed them “special favours,” and when they were at another Court, the same. It is a conversation that would weary a mistress of the Robes. It can not add much intellectual stimulus to the life of royalty. I could never see that it added any to mine. Nevertheless, whether with diplomats or what not, these days moved along for us very brightly. We young and active. My brother and his wife were idyllically happy in their married life; and their happiness was reflected in all around them. He was working with the prospect of greater success to come with greater experience, living simply, taking healthful exercise, using tact and patience, and keeping a cheerful hope. Then, in the sixth month of his marriage, the heart was cut out of it all by the death of his young Queen after a miscarriage that resulted in blood-poisoning from some bungling of the doctors. They treated her for typhoid fever and blundered about for weeks, till a putrefaction had set in that no treatment could retard. She was buried in the Escurial, and my brother would not leave the palace. Every day he would shut himself up, for hours, in the crypt where her tomb was; and when we tried to coax him away he would not speak to us. It was midsummer and the heat was extreme, but he would not leave her body to go to La Granja. He would not do anything but grieve, in a silence that worried us more than the wildest outburst, neglecting himself and his duties, taking no exercise, sunken in a mood of passionate despair that seemed to have put him beyond our reach. He did not sleep. We coaxed him to come out for a little fresh air in the early mornings about five o’clock, and again in the evenings after sunset, but it was months before I succeeded in getting him to ride on horseback. The Spaniards do not understand a grief that is silent. He did not care. He seemed to have lost interest in life entirely; and, as the months passed, we were afraid that his health would be destroyed.