After a little experience, one can recognise these lesser royalties at a glance and pick them out in a crowded drawing-room. They all have the same high-shouldered carriage, stiff-backed, with a stretched neck to carry a raised chin. Their lips smile very easily, but their eyes almost never. They are accustomed to being stared at; indeed, they would be disappointed if they did not attract stares; and they seem to present their faces even to a private company, not nervously, nor quite self-consciously, but with an expression of friendly and impenetrable self-complacency that becomes recognisable as the royal mask. They are usually, because of their training, rather stupid, but their dignity makes them look wise. They are always concerned with their own popularity, are gracious by policy, [Illustration: KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM] and try to leave each individual with the impression that he has been personally distinguished by their notice. They are not only playing a part, but they believe that they are really the part they play; so that any true conversation with them is largely impossible. Their minds, like their faces, are always making a public appearance and considering effect. When they are alone with their own kind, they are free to talk of the matters that really interest them, and it is a conversation as typical as the little gossip of a group of nuns. They have no opinions to express on the problems of government; “it is a duty that they owe the crown” to express none, and consequently they rarely acquire any. They know little of the world around them, and say less. To arrive at any speaking acquaintance with matters of literature and music and art, one must make a mental effort in study, to which the Court life of busy empty-mindedness is not conducive. They converse, therefore, about royalty only--the latest marriage, the most recent engagement, the death of this prince, the illness of that, a birth in Spain, an archduke’s affair with a mistress in Austria--family happenings considered only in their family aspect, as idle as gossip, largely innocent, wholly uninteresting.