We were still attending Court functions and receptions, and going to dinners and luncheons at the palace; and on May 17th we were summoned there to hear the official announcement of the “Capitan-General” that “the King of Spain” had been born. It was at first intended to name him Ferdinand, to avoid the unlucky XIII., but for the sake of his father’s memory the name of Alfonso was demanded, and he was inscribed as “Alfonso XIII., Leon Fernando Mario Isidro Santiago Pascual y Anton.” (My mother complained that the names were too few. She had been accustomed to give us at least a dozen each!) A month later the Queen-Regent presented the King in the chapel, and then offered him to the Blessed Virgin, in an extraordinary ceremony at the church of Atoche, with Te Deums and Salves, and a Royal parade. It was now almost midsummer, and I was resolved to get away. I had hoped to return to Paris, but the Duc de Montpensier brought us word that the Orleans family might be expelled from France, in which case we should go to Switzerland for our summer. I was sorry for more than selfish reasons, for I had had visits from my new relatives, and found them charming. Late in June the good news came that, though the Comte de Paris had been expelled and his property confiscated, the Government would go no farther; and early in July my husband and I started with the Duc and my mother-in-law to go through Paris on our way to join the Comte and Comtesse de Paris in Tunbridge Wells. I was leaving behind me many happy days, but many also that were so unendurably sad that I was eager to be gone from the scenes that recalled them to me. I was no longer a prisoner of State. I was still, if you wish, “a ticket-of-leave man.” But no convict, released on good behaviour, ever went out with more relief, even though he was still to be subject to some State surveillance, and perhaps never to be wholly free of the instinctive timidities of the mind that has been guarded. CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH