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That, then, was the sort of childhood one had in the Palais de Castile. I saw the comings and goings of politicians and personages from Spain without paying any attention to them and without knowing what they were about; for I spoke French and but little Spanish. With my mother, who spoke almost no French, we talked with difficulty in a mixture of both languages. We scarcely saw her except at dinner in the evening among her foreign guests, or on Sunday when we went to chapel in the Palais; and we children made our own lives among ourselves, apart from the affairs of our elders. I had achieved a certain independence of mind, although no independence of action was possible to me. I had escaped the narrowing influences of our life, but no broadening influences reached me. I had to make my own mental growth without the aid of liberal books or the culture that one gets from informing conversation. I often wonder what would have become of me if another revolution had not returned us to Spain.