They went to church for both. When a young Spaniard wished to begin courting he told the priest about it. The priest consulted the girl’s parents, and if the match was thought suitable, arrangements were made for her to attend certain Masses on certain mornings with her chaperon. Her official cavalier then posted himself somewhere near, made eyes at her during the service, and stood at the holy-water font when Mass was over, to offer her holy water as she went out. It was possible, also, to leave a letter at the church door with some old beggar, who would deliver it to the proper person in return for alms; but this correspondence was not for young girls. Their courting was carried on by means of devout looks, which were not required, one hopes, to be too oblique. I thought it very silly, and I said so; but the girls argued, piously, that since love was “a sacrament” it was right it should begin with holy water and benefit of clergy. I do not remember that the same argument was made for the intriguing ladies who carried on their correspondence through the beggars. As a matter of fact, the relations between the sexes were all wrong, since there could be no secure happiness based on such ignorance and Orientalism in a Western community, where the women can not be denied after marriage the liberty for which they are not prepared before that event.
When I was about fifteen years old, a young Austrian archduke came to Madrid to visit my brother, and I was presented to him with my sisters, and saw him at a distance at the dinner-table, and bowed to him as I passed him in the hall. Next morning my brother summoned me to his apartments to tell me that the archduke wished to become engaged to me. “But,” I said, amazed, “I have scarcely spoken to him!” Never mind; he had said he was in love with me; he wanted to marry me. And as soon as I had recovered from my first astonishment, the idea delighted me. To be engaged! It made me feel quite grown-up. Quite important. Almost married. And I thought it would give me a standing at Court that would prevent the Mistress of the Robes from being so dictatorial.
It would be impossible for me to marry for some time. Our family fortunes had been so depleted during the revolution that I had no dot, and the young archduke had not yet come into his estate either. My brother, acting as a father to his sisters, was paying all our expenses out of his own pocket, and saving for us, as dots, the moneys that were allowed us by the Government. So it was agreed that my engagement with the archduke should not be made public and official until enough money had been saved to make a provision for me.
Meanwhile I was privately engaged—and very proud of it. It was not extraordinary, in the Spanish Royal Family, for a girl to be engaged in her teens. My sister Isabel had been married at sixteen; and my grand-aunt, the Infanta Luisa Carlota, had been married at thirteen and was a grandmother at twenty-seven. But neither of my other sisters was engaged yet, and I enjoyed the advantage over them.
Even so, the archduke was not allowed to see me alone, and his courtship had to be formal. We were allowed to walk together in the garden of the palace, but only under the chaperonage of a lady-in-waiting, who followed a few paces behind us. One day, turning a corner of the path, we were hidden for a moment from the eyes of our chaperon, and the archduke seized his opportunity to kiss me. There was an adventure for you! When we returned to the palace I hastened to tell my sister. She was horrified. She ran to tell the governess. The governess was even more shocked. She declared that I had committed a mortal sin. “Good!” I cried. “I’m glad of it! At last I have committed a mortal sin! I didn’t think it was possible—the way I am watched.” There was a great to-do. They declared that I must go to confession at once.
I went, next morning, defiantly, and in such excitement that I confessed in a voice that could be heard by every one near the confessional. I had committed a mortal sin! I had been kissed by the archduke! And the manner in which I blurted it out was so funny that the priest burst out laughing. I asked him how it could be a sin to be kissed by the man who was going to marry me. He replied, teasing me, “But if you don’t marry him, still the kiss will remain.” “I don’t care,” I said; “it won’t show.” He assured me, finally, that it was not a sin at all; and perhaps I should have been crestfallen if it were not that I had triumphed over the others. Then, as the story got about, it started a reputation for me as a flirt, which I enjoyed innocently. An Infanta of Spain kissed by a man at fifteen! It was almost a record.
When the archduke went away we were allowed to write to each other, though, of course, our letters had to be read by some one. I gave mine to my brother, but I do not suppose he ever glanced at them; the letters of a girl of fifteen, in such circumstances, would not be very interesting. I began to ask questions about the Austrian Court, where I should have to live after I married; and the reports I heard of it were not reassuring. The etiquette was most strict. I should be worse off there than in Madrid. And I should be separated from my brother. Very soon I did not like the thought of my engagement at all.
My brother had told us, at our first meeting on our return to Spain, that he was in love with a daughter of the Duc de Montpensier; that they had been corresponding unknown to her family—who were not so strict as ours—and that he intended to marry her. My mother was outraged at this announcement, for it was well known that the Duc de Montpensier had helped to bring about the revolution that had lost her the throne. When we went to Sevilla, to live in the Alcazar, she forgave the Duc, who had a place in Sevilla, but she continued to intrigue against my brother’s marriage; and it was because of this that he quarrelled with her, and let her go back to France when we Infantas came to live with him in Madrid.
The Duc de Montpensier was the youngest son of King Louis Philippe of France, and—like all that king’s sons—extremely clever. He had married my mother’s sister, another daughter of King Ferdinand VII., on the same day that my parents married; and he had lived in Spain ever since. In Sevilla my sisters and I became very friendly with our young cousins, the Duc’s children, and I became like another daughter to the Duc, whom I adored. He had all the charm of the esprit Français, animated and witty, accustomed to conversation with clever people, tolerant of opinions opposed to his own, and hating—more than anything else in the world—stupidity. He delighted me. He sympathised with me. I used to tell him all my little troubles.
I think that when the history of my mother’s reign and the republic is written, it will lay great stress on the Duc’s influence in Spain. At once, on his arrival, he had attracted to himself all the Liberal elements in the Spanish Court, unconsciously, as