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He accompanied us to the Escurial, which we approached from the mountains, so that we looked down on it. It was built in a square, with a wing coming out of one side like a handle. “What a funny palace!” I said. “It is the shape of a frying-pan.” My brother told me that this was intentionally so; that Philip II. had dedicated the palace to St. Lorenzo, who had been martyred on a gridiron; and the shape of the building was designed to remind the kings that if they were wicked they would be fried in hell. I enjoyed with him the charming naïveté of the symbolism. He was no more illiberal than I about his religion. Indeed, I think he was the only King of Spain who did not constantly go to confession.

Half of the Escurial was a monastery and a school, where the monks taught; for Philip II. had been fanatically religious, and he had lived there as “Brother Philip,” even while he conducted the war in the Netherlands and sent the famous Armada against England. The tombs of the Royal family were all here—to make it more cheerful—and new tombs were waiting for us, the daughters of Queen Isabella, so that I might regard my own sepulchre. I regarded it with amusement, because it seemed to me a childishness to make a daily bugaboo of death.