The Queen is Austrian, and she has never gone out of her way to conciliate the people by making herself really Spanish. This she has left to the Infanta Isabel, the eldest sister of Alfonso XII. For many years before the birth of her brother, the Infanta Isabel was Princess of Asturias, as heiress apparent of the Crown. With the advent of a boy, she became, of course, only Infanta, losing the rank which she had held up to this time. Being but a child at the time, she perhaps knew or cared little for any difference it may have made in her surroundings. She shared in the flight of the Royal Family to France in 1868, and her education was completed in Paris. When the whirligig of Spanish politics called her brother Alfonso, who at the time was a military student at Sandhurst, to the throne from which his mother had been driven, Princess Isabel returned with him to Madrid, and was once more installed in the Palace, above the Manzanares, as Princess of Asturias. This rank remained hers during the short episode of her brother's marriage to his cousin Mercédes, and the melancholy death of the girl Queen at the moment when a direct heir to the throne was expected. Once more, when the daughter of Alfonso's second wife, the present Queen Regent, was born, the Infanta Isabel became her title, and she took again the lower rank. Nothing in history is more pathetic than this first marriage of Alfonso XII. and its unhappy termination. The children of Queen Isabel and those of her sister, the Duquesa de Montpensier, had been brought up together, and there was a boy-and-girl attachment between the Prince of Asturias and his cousin Mercédes. When Alfonso became King, almost as it seemed by accident, and it was thought necessary that he should marry, the boy gravely assured his Ministers that he was quite willing to do so, and in fact intended to marry his cousin. Nothing could be more inopportune, nothing more contrary to the welfare of the distracted country! From the time that the notorious "Spanish marriages" had become facts, the Duke of Montpensier had been an intriguer. The birth of heirs to the throne of Spain (it is useless to go back to those long-past scandals) had completely upset the machinations of Louis Philippe and his Ministers. So long as Don Francisco de Assis and the Spanish nation chose to acknowledge the children as legitimate, there was nothing to be done. The direct hope of seeing his sons Kings of Spain faded from the view of the French husband of the sister of Isabel II., but he never for one moment ceased to intrigue. Although loaded with benefits and kindness by the Queen, Montpensier took no small part in the revolution which drove her from the country. Topete, and Serrano--who had once been what the Spaniards called _Pollo Real_ himself--were bound in honour to uphold his candidature for the vacant throne; their promise had been given long before the _pronunciamiento_ at Cadiz had made successful revolution possible.