Court Life From Within
Eulalia Infanta of Spain
9781465633934
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Once, when I was making an official visit to the South of Spain with my brother (who was then King), we were told of a gentleman of the Province of Sevilla who had had a talking parrot sent to him from South America; and this parrot had been taught to say “Viva la Reina!”—that is, “Long live the Queen!” But soon after its arrival in Sevilla there was a revolution, and Spain became a republic; and it was not at all comfortable for the gentleman to have a parrot screaming “Long live the Queen!” So he shut it up in a room in his house and set himself to teach it to cry “Viva la Republica!”—“Long live the Republic!” It was a very intelligent parrot, and he easily taught it to say “Viva la Republica!”; but it had a tenacious memory, and it took him a long time before he could be sure that it would always say “Viva la Republica!” and never forget its change of politics and cry out, inopportunely, in a voice to be heard by the neighbours, “Viva la Reina!” Then there was another revolution, and Spain became a monarchy again, and every one shouted “Viva el Rey!”—“Long live the King!” And the gentleman carried his parrot back to the closed room, and after many days spent in trying to teach it to cry “Viva el Rey!” he wrung its neck. It was a very valuable parrot, and most intelligent, but it was not sufficiently facile to take a speaking part in Spanish politics in those days. I have remembered this sad story of the parrot because the events of its life were so important to my own. The Queen whom it first supported was my mother, Isabella II. The King on whose account it lost its life was my brother, Alfonso XII. And the Republic (which lasted from 1868 to 1874) was the one that made it possible for me to escape, at least mentally and spiritually, from the prison—very gilded, very luxurious, but more guarded than a Bastille—in which Royalty is compelled to live. Such an escape, I think, is more difficult than any of Baron Trenck’s. It is one that leaves, as you might say, the impediment of fetters on the mind, even when the body has gone free. And I have long been curious to consider what it was in me that made me struggle out of this splendid confinement, in which one is so envied and so many are so content. When the revolution of ’68 first disturbed my life—and the parrot’s—I was too young to know it. The intelligence was still unformed, the body infantile. But both the body and the mind had been born of a race so old and in traditions so established that it would seem no revolution could affect them. For many hundreds of years a few families of human beings had been inheriting the thrones of Europe, generation after generation, as families inherit property, from parents to children, by the consent of society and under the protection of law. They were by birth “Royal,” as persons may be, in democracies, by birth wealthy. And they were born to rule as unquestionably as the children of the poor to-day are born to poverty. They were spoken of as “Blood Royal,” as if they were of special flesh, and they intermarried only with Blood Royal, because the people whom they governed demanded children of this special flesh to sit on the thrones of their countries. A king here or a queen there might lose a crown by bad management, or misfortune, or the ill-will of subjects, as a man might lose an inherited estate by similar causes; but he could not lose his place among the families of Royalty (with whom he and his children had intermarried) nor the honours of Courts and the respect of peoples who still obeyed members of the ruling families into which he had been born. So, since I had been born into one of these families—the Bourbon—the essentials of my life were as little changed by the revolution of ’68 as the parrot’s were. We both remained in our cages.
