At eight-thirty he dines. Week day evenings, the King goes to whatever social functions he has to attend. King Alfonso appreciates his social duties as a sovereign quite as much as his duties of state.
Coming down the main stairway of a house in Madrid after a dance at five o’clock in the morning once he met one of his secretaries. “You lucky beggar,” he exclaimed, “you need not get out of your bed before three in the afternoon, while I must be up to receive my ministers as usual!” One of the great reasons for the popularity of King Alfonso is his attention to social affairs. He enters into these functions with the same zest that he does everything else and he is seldom accused of putting a damper on an occasion by leaving too early.
The great fact concerning Don Alfonso that appeals to me is his extreme humanness. He is ever and always on the spot. In his movements, he is as quick as lightning and his mind is extraordinarily alert. Disciplined to the very highest pitch of efficiency, he is an all round able man, and would be so considered in any walk of life. He is never too busy to attend to the last, smallest detail concerning any matter in his Kingdom.
One day he said to me, “Anything that you want in Spain, or about Spain, don’t go anywhere else--let me know directly.”
Whether he is presiding over his Council of Ministers or amiably and gracefully performing some ceremony incident to the duties of sovereignty or receiving in audience, or playing polo with his own chosen companions, or driving his great 70 h.p. car across country at reckless speed, or taking tea with the Queen, he is always at once the same blithe spirit, the spontaneous youth and the earnest man of affairs. In uniform, he looks a born soldier. At polo, he appears like a man who lives for sport. In ordinary attire, he is the dapper young blood of any capital city, sleek, well-groomed, immaculate. His face is as elusive as a kaleidoscope, changing each second. Smiles and laughter play around his mouth and eyes but underneath the surface one instinctively feels the intense, thoughtful nature of an inspired leader of men.
These glimpses of the man--Alfonso,--his character, temperament and personality, may enable us to picture the environment of the English Princess, whose early life was spent in the tranquil atmosphere of the Isle of Wight and the favourite Scottish home of Queen Victoria of England. From the moment of her entrance into Spain, she has lived amid strenuous scenes, and in an atmosphere as different from her native land as anything could be. Yet she has risen to it all like the born Queen she is. That the lurking dangers which so often apprise her royal spouse, sorely try her spirit and sometimes wear her nerves is not to be wondered at. That she exercises the control she does is the cause of our admiration.