The pretty princess was born in December. She arrived, “when all sweets were over, to bless the year,” even like our own little princess Elizabeth, who came with the snow one Childermas day, and passed away with it, like other holy innocents, in her brief spring. Isabella’s full name was Isabelle Marie Louise Antoinette--either so, or written in Italian, or Spanish, as you please. To her kinsfolk she was always Isabelita. They spoke French for the most part in Parma; for although Don Philip was a son of the fifth haughty monarch of that name of Spain, his royal spouse was by far the more forceful spirit of the pair, a true and steadfast daughter of France, and her will and tastes prevailed above those of her vain good-natured husband. Wherefore it was that this twelfth year of the duke’s enjoyment of his Italian possessions found the court largely weeded of its original Spanish dependants, and savouring more of Paris than of Madrid in its councils and pastimes. Isabella commonly spoke French; and so, through long habit of resignation, did her _gouvernante_, the Marquise de Gonzalès, a fat old _rabâcheuse_, who, wishful long ago to escape this tiresome servitude of hers, had only been induced to stay on in view of the inability of the ducal exchequer to settle her account. She was a twaddling, scandalmongering old woman, who “passait pour aimer l’intrigue”--not the best mentor for an impressionable young girl, one would think. But, indeed, the old lady’s wits were never the servants of her inclinations, and I think Isabella measured her fairly enough, her pretence and her harmlessness, and was never, though she dutifully submitted, more or Jess, to her duennaship, in the least danger of imbibing from her principles derogatory to her maidenhood. At the same time the girl, not ignorant of the financial difficulties which had almost persistently beset the duchy, was prepared to suffer sweetly enough the almost arrogant show of authority which the Marquise’s consciousness of grievance emboldened her to assume.