(3 of 4)
About this time, talk of marriage was heard; and, not long after, Alfonso set out for a tour of the Courts. Although there was not a court at Paris, that Capital had always appealed to him as being filled to overflowing with the most voluptuous of damsels. So at Paris, on his return from visiting Uncle Fred (Archduke Friedrich) in Austria, President Loubet and his Ministers welcomed the King of Spain; and all he got out of the visit, besides a rousing reception, was a night at the Opéra when he narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a Spaniard. Of all the Courts he had visited and all the princesses he had seen, none appealed to him as much as Victoria Eugenie, the blue-eyed, fair-haired Princess Ena of Battenberg, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. And so, at Biarritz, he became formally engaged to her; and, the next year (1906), the couple were married in Madrid. The ceremony was marred only by the dastardly attempt of an anarchist on the lives of the royal pair. Fortunately, they escaped all injury; unfortunately, several spectators and members of the wedding procession were killed or injured.