What was the cause of the attempt by the Spanish Court to stop the publication of “The Thread of Life”? The Infanta herself believed that “the reason they took so much offence was that they imagined it was going to be a book on some other subject--a book that would make a scandal. This was the most remote possible thing from my mind. I had no idea that anyone would trouble about my book. It was for that reason that I had only a small number of copies printed, to be handed round to my friends.” The book was written in French because the Infanta assumed that it would not arouse very much interest in Spain. “I think,” she said to a correspondent of the _Época_, “that the general mode of thought in Spain is not particularly in harmony with the ideas which my book reveals.” The incident, however, has served the useful purpose of drawing the attention of the world to a volume of thoughtful essays by one of the most remarkable personages to be found in the Royal families of Europe--essays which are the more interesting because they are the reasoned conclusions of one who, born and bred in the purple, has emancipated herself from the circumscribed past by contact and sympathy with the wider world of common things. PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C. End of Project Gutenberg's The thread of life, by Eulalia, Infanta of Spain