Like his grandmother, the notorious Isabella II, his father, aunts, and cousins, and indeed every one of the Bourbons, he is a sad physical weakling.

The physicians politely term “scrofulous diathesis” the syphilitic taint of the Bourbon blood. In his grandmother it showed itself in a repulsive cutaneous disease which she tried to ameliorate or cure in a truly Bourbon-ish way, by having her underclothing [{42}] previously worn by a nun of high repute for piety.

Alfonso’s XIII.‘s father burned himself out at the age of 28. His aunts and kinsmen all had some one or more of scrofula’s varied physical degradations and deformities, and went out from time to time like ill-made candles.

Though the hopes of his race and the peace of his country depend upon Alfonso’s life, all the care given him in his boyhood could do no more than slightly mitigate the ancestral blight.

[{43}] A FEW years ago the people of Holland were threatened with a most serious calamity. Depraved heredity, unwise sexual selection, or some other primal cause had resulted in the production, as the Prince of Orange—the Crown Prince—of an individual of a weak, inferior, and depraved nature. His was such a nature as on a throne becomes a fountain of numberless oppressions and evils, and rarely fails to goad the unhappy subjects into rebellion, attended with the usual frightful loss of life and property and vast sorrows. Fortunately he had destructive vices. The appetite for these led him to Paris. A few years of riot and [{44}] debauchery sapped away the dangerous life of “Lemons,” as his worthless boon-companions named him, and he died as the fool dieth. The only harm he was able to do was the indirect damage of a bad example, and the good people of the Netherlands were rid of a possible Louis XV. at no greater cost than that of some years of extravagant life in the French capital. His father’s evil excesses and penchant for pretty ballet-girls left as his only successor a young not over-strong girl, who thus far has failed to produce an heir to the throne, to the deep disappointment of such of her people as love royalty. Holland will, therefore, [{45}] in all probability, glide into a republic without the usual sanguinary convulsions attending such transitions.

IT is the story of the Ages—old when the Pyramids were yet young; new to every generation. Hannibal’s victorious army found the “soft delights of Capua” far more deadly than Roman swords. That famous “Winter in Capua” wrecked the invaders, saved Rome, and ruined Carthage.

[{46}] IN conspicuous contrast to the royal and aristocratic families just alluded to are the houses of Hohenzollern and Savoy.