There now began for me an interesting experience. I had started out to travel and see the sights of Europe, a bride of twenty-two, with a mind in some ways older than my age, as inquisitive as youth, but, perhaps, not so subject to youth’s self-deception; as interested as youth in my own observations (rather than in any general view or philosophical explanation of society), but sceptical, and with no youthful tendency to illusions either romantic or royal. The European travels of such a young lady could not have much interest, ordinarily. But, for ten years and more, I went from Court to Court, rather than from country to country, in that huge family of Royalty whose members have been intermarrying for so many generations that all the occupants of the thrones of Europe have become cousins, and a princess can visit from palace to palace as if from house to house among relatives in a countryside. And it was an interesting experience, I say, because Royalty is not of semi-sacred caste that in one country will be accepted as quite holy and God-given, and in another will be merely allowed to live pensioned--like vergers in some fine old cathedral after its worship has been abolished and its altars removed--and in yet others will be existing in all the intermediate stages between these two extremes; honoured by this faction and attacked by that, reformed and reconstructed and embellished and defaced. It was interesting, as it had been in Spain, to discover the anomalies and false appearances and thin lava-crusts on which we seemed to live so securely. Being well aware of how I saw myself in my own mind, it was interesting to study what was in the minds of other royal personages--to see how they regarded themselves and how they thought they were regarded--and to learn what real credit we had and what actual appearance we made in the minds of the people who saluted us with such varying degrees of curiosity and respect.