The niece wife of Philip II. bore him many children, of whom one weakling alone survived to inherit the oppressive crown of his father. Anna was a homely, devout soul, submissive and obedient to her husband, ever busy with her needle and her household cares; and, like the other members of her house, overpowered with the vastness and majesty of the mission confided by heaven to its chief.^[198] On the voyage to Portugal in 1580 Philip fell ill at Badajoz, and when his life was despaired of Anna fervently prayed that he might be saved, even if she had to be sacrificed instead. Her prayer was heard; and as the husband of fifty-three recovered the wife of thirty sickened and died, leaving Philip broken and lonely to live the rest of his weary life for his work alone. The struggle to prevent the victory of reform in France, which occupied Philip’s later years, and consummated the ruin of his country, rendered impossible a renewal of the idea of a French and Spanish coalition, except, indeed, by the conquest of France by Philip, which many years of fruitless war proved to be impossible, whilst the gallant cynic, Henry of Navarre, could hold up the national banner of France as a rally point against the foreign invader.

Once Philip, in sheer despair, turned, when it was too late, to England again in the hope of bringing it into his system by force, if intrigue and subornation of conspiracy and murder failed: but with the defeat of the Armada that hope fled too; and again there was no possible bride but an Austrian cousin for Philip’s heir, Philip III., and no feasible policy from Philip’s point of view but a continuance of the close family alliance with the German Habsburg descendants of Joan the Mad. The Emperor, it is true, was forced to tolerate his Lutheran princes; but he and his house made common cause with the Philips when the French cast greedy eyes towards Catholic Flanders or Italy. Margaret of Austria brought to sickly, scrofulous Philip III. an anÆmic body and a stunted mind to rear his children. She implored her mother passionately to save her from the terrifying honour of sharing the gloomy throne of her cousin, for in her Styrian home she lived the life of a nun, devoted only to the humble care of the poor and sick of her own land: but she was sternly told that all must be sacrificed to the supreme duty that was hers; and thenceforward she, too, lived in the awestricken atmosphere of religious abnegation, which was the mark of her Spanish kindred.^[199] In besotted, conventual devotion, and frivolous trifling in turns, her monkish husband and she passed their lives; their children, of whom they had several, all bloodless decadents of low vitality, with big mumbling jaws and lack-lustre eyes, brought up in the same pathetic tradition that to them and Spain—poor, ruined, desolated Spain now—was confided the sacred duty and honour of upholding religious orthodoxy throughout the world at any cost or sacrifice.

So long as Henry IV. was King of France, even though he had ‘gone to mass,’ the close union with Spain was impossible: but on the fateful day in May 1610 when, in the narrow Paris lane, the dagger of Ravaillac pierced the heart of the great ‘BÉarnais,’ all was changed. The Queen-Regent of France was one of the Papal Medici, imbued, as they all were, with the tradition of Spain’s orthodoxy and overwhelming might. Her marriage with Henry had been a victory for the extreme Catholic party in Europe; but so long as Henry lived he had prevented violent reaction. Now that he was gone, with his Huguenot traditions, France and Spain, it was thought, might again be joined in a Catholic league, and together impose their form of faith upon the world, either by armed force or political pressure. It was a foolish, impracticable plan, for Frenchmen were too far advanced now to be used to play the game of impotent bankrupt Spain, powerful only in its pride and its traditions.

But James I. of England had been toadying and humiliating himself to gain Philip’s aid in favour of his son-in-law, the Palatine in Germany, and it doubtless seemed a good stroke of policy on the part of France and Spain to leave him and the Lutherans isolated. In any case no time was lost, and before Henry IV. had lain in his tomb at St. Denis a year it was agreed that the Spanish Infanta, Anna, should marry Louis XIII. of France, and that Isabel, or Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Henry IV. and Marie de Medici, should become the wife of Philip, Prince of Asturias, the son and heir of the Spanish King. All the betrothed were children of tender age, and it was agreed that the exchange of brides should be deferred until the Infanta was twelve years old (1613). Pompous and lavish embassies went through the solemn farce of paying honour to the girl-children respectively as Queen of France and Princess of Asturias. The Duke of Mayenne, of the house of Guise, ruffled and swaggered in Madrid with a marriage embassy so splendid in 1612, that the cost of entertaining him beggared the capital for years; and so keen was the emulation in sumptuousness of dress and adornments during the interminable festivities in Madrid to celebrate the double betrothals, that the Spanish nobles came to dagger-thrusts on the subject in the palace itself.

In Paris Ruy Gomez’s son, the Duke of Pastrana, paid similar court to the dark-haired girl of nine who was betrothed to young Philip, heir of Spain, two years younger. Three years more had to pass, notwithstanding the impatience of the French, before the backward little Infanta Anna, in October 1615, was conveyed with a pomp and extravagance that ill matched the penury of her father’s realm, to the frontier of France, there to be exchanged for Isabel of Bourbon, her brother’s bride.^[200] On the 9th November 1615 all the chivalry of France and Spain were once more assembled on either bank of the little stream of Bidasoa that separated the two countries. Wasteful luxury and vain magnificence had been squandered wantonly by the Spanish nobles, determined, as usual, to put the French to shame. At Behovia, the point where the ceremony was to take place, sumptuous banqueting-halls had been erected upon rafts moored on each side of the stream, whilst in mid-current another raft supported a splendid pavilion covered with velvet and cloth of gold, and carpeted with priceless silken carpets from the East. Here the Duke of Guise delivered Isabel of France to the Duke of Uceda, in exchange for Anna of Austria, thenceforward Queen of France. The romantic and turbulent career of the latter is related elsewhere: here we have to follow the fortunes of the beautiful dark-haired girl of twelve who, like Isabel of the Peace fifty-four years before, turned her back upon her native land to cement the Catholic alliance between France and Spain.^[201]

The circumstances were widely different, for the battle of religious liberty in Europe was practically won, though the blind faith and vanity of Philip III. refused, even now, to recognise the fact, or his own poverty-stricken impotence. The Medici Queen-Regent of France, moreover, was a very different person from her kinswoman Catharine. She was not playing her own game so much as that of the cunning Italians who directed her, and it was soon evident, under Richelieu, that Frenchmen were no longer to be made the playthings of foreign ambitions. Isabel, child as she was, had a stout heart and a high spirit, as befitted her father’s daughter. She was willing enough to be a queen upon the most pretentious throne in Europe; but she was not made for martyrdom, and, as we shall see, her marriage was even less influential in securing lasting peace and co-operation between France and Spain than that of the previous Isabel had been.

Through Fuenterrabia, San Sebastian and Vitoria, Isabel travelled towards Burgos, where she was to meet her boy bridegroom. Dressed in Spanish garb from Vitoria onward, she won all hearts by her gaiety and brightness; and, as an eyewitness says of her, ‘even if she had French blood in her veins she had a Spanish spirit.’ Philip III. and his son met the bride a league from Burgos, and we are told that the prince of eleven years old was so dazzled with her beauty that he could only gaze speechless upon her. The next day Burgos was all alive with the splendour of the welcome of the future Queen, who entered the city on a white palfrey with a silver saddle and housings of velvet and pearls; and so, from city to city, smiling and happy, the girl, in the midst of the inflated Court, slowly made her way to Madrid. On the afternoon of 19th December 1615 Isabel rode from the monastery of St. Jerome^[202] through Madrid to the palace upon the cliff overlooking the valley of the Manzanares. An eyewitness describes her appearance as she rode through the mile of crowded narrow streets of old Madrid, under triumphal arches, past thousands of peopled balconies, hung with tapestries, with songs and music of welcome all the way. ‘Her Highness was dressed in the French fashion, with an entire robe of crimson satin embroidered with bugles, a little cap trimmed with diamonds, and a ruff beautifully trimmed in French style, and with a rosette and girdle of diamonds of great size. She went her way, bright and buxom, full of rejoicing. Her aquiline face was wreathed in smiles, and her fine eyes flashed from side to side, looking at everything, to the great delight of the populace.’^[203]

It was five years after this, on the 25th November 1620, at the palace of Pardo, that young Philip and Isabel began their married life together. Philip was yet barely sixteen when (in March 1621) the low vitality of his father flickered out, and the monarch, who should have been a monk, passed, in alternate paroxysms of fear and ecstacies of hope, from the world in which he had meant so well and done so ill. The corruption and waste under Lerma and his crew of parasites had bled Spain to the white, and utter ruin was now the lot of whole populations. The tradition of the King’s wealth which still lingered could hardly be kept up now, though at the fall of Lerma some of the worst robbers had been made to disgorge their booty. The King had been beloved and revered for his saintliness, but all saw the desolation that his idle dependence upon favourites had caused. Spain now looked only to the sallow, long-faced boy, Philip IV., with the light blue eyes and lank flaxen hair, to save the people from starvation. Not to him, but to the man at his side, it soon learned to look. He was a big-boned powerful man of thirty-three, with a great square head, heavy stooping shoulders, fierce black eyes, burning like live coals in an olive face; and his upturned twisted moustache added to the haughty imperiousness of his mien. This was the man, Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of St. Lucar, who made a clean sweep of all the corrupt gang that had fattened upon Spain, the brood of Rojas and Sandoval, and replaced them with his own creatures. Philip, like his father, meant well, and was naturally a much more able man; but he was idle, pleasure-loving, and pathetically unable to resist temptation, each constantly recurring transgression being followed by an agony of remorse, only to be again committed when the first poignancy of regret had passed.

Following the advice of Olivares, he attempted to mend matters by cutting down expenses alone, instead of changing the system of taxation and finance; and the ‘spirited foreign policy’ which he adopted soon involved him in expenditure, which later completed the downfall of the country. The foolish old dream that catholic unity might be won by Spanish arms still kept him at war with the Dutch, whilst the Moors were harrying the Spanish coasts and commerce, and France and Spain were already at loggerheads again, now that Marie de Medici and her crew had been thrust into the background. Instead of recognising facts and lying low to recuperate, Olivares and Philip, with the blinded nation behind them, were as boastful and haughty as their predecessors had been in the days of Spain’s strength. The weak poltroon who reigned unworthily in England, was ever ready to truckle to apparent strength. He had sacrificed Raleigh at Spain’s bidding, he had been contemptuously used and scorned by Lerma and Philip III. when he had tried to marry his heir to a Spanish Infanta, and he had been cleverly kept from an alliance with France by hopes and half promises. But the Palatinate was still unrestored, and when Philip III. had died, James made another attempt with the new King to win Spain’s friendship by a marriage.

The hare-brained trip of Prince Charles and Buckingham to Madrid, to win the hand of the Infanta and the alliance of Spain, has often been described, and can hardly be touched upon here. The Prince suddenly appeared disguised at the English embassy at Madrid on the 7th March 1622, and the next day, to the dismay of Olivares, the awkward visit was known to all the capital. He and young Philip made the best of a bad business. To abandon Austria and the Palatinate for the sake of protestant England did not suit them, but they could be polite. All the edicts ordering economy of dress, eating, and adornments, were suspended, and whilst Charles stayed in Madrid a tempest of prodigality prevailed. Isabel and the Infanta played their parts in the farce with apprehension and reluctance, for the former knew that the besought alliance was directed against France, and the Infanta was horrified at the idea of marrying a heretic. But they did their best to keep up appearances, especially Isabel, who treated Charles most graciously. The day after his arrival, Philip and his wife and sister, the latter with a blue ribbon round her arm to distinguish her, rode in a coach to the church in the Prado, and Charles, of course quite by accident, met them both coming and going, to his great satisfaction. Soon after Isabel sent to the English prince a fine present of white underwear, a nightgown beautifully worked, and several scented coffers, with golden keys, full of toilet requisites, probably guessing that in his rapid voyage he had not brought such luxuries with him; and at the great bull fight at the Plaza Mayor in honour of the Prince, she sat in brown satin, bordered with gold, in the fine balcony of the city bread-store overlooking the Plaza, as Charles, in black velvet and white feathers, rode his fine bay horse into the arena by the side of Philip, to take his place in an adjoining box.

Before the masked ball on Easter Sunday, given by the Admiral of Castile in Charles’s honour, Isabel in white satin, covered with precious stones, dined in public; and then, changing her dress to one of black and gold, awaited the English Prince to lead her to the ballroom. There during the entertainment, and on all other occasions, he sat at her right hand under a royal canopy, with Philip on her left; whilst the Earl of Bristol, on his knees before them, interpreted the small talk suitable to the occasion. And so, with comedies and cane tourneys, banquets and balls, Charles and Buckingham were beguiled by Olivares for well nigh six months, until the farce grew stale, and Charles wended his way home again, nominally betrothed to the Infanta, but really outwitted and his country humiliated. The defeat was softened by much loving profession and splendid presents from Philip and his courtiers to the English Prince; and it is somewhat curious that, on the departure of Charles, the present given to him by Isabel again took the form of white linen garments, fifty amber-dressed skins, two hundred and fifty scented kidskins for gloves, a large sum in silver crowns, and other things.^[204]

Philip and his wife had now settled down to their regular life in the most brilliant court in Europe. It was the Augustan age of Spanish literature and the drama, and a perfect craze for comedies and satirical verse seized upon the Spanish people, under the influence of the King and Queen, both of them passionately fond of the theatre and diversions of all sorts. Isabel, like her husband, was conventionally devout, and her religious benefactions were constant, as well as her attendances at the ceremonies of the church;^[205] but in her devotion she had none of the gloomy monastic character which had afflicted her husband’s family, and the social demeanour of the courtiers and of the townspeople generally underwent a complete change in her time. Her manners, indeed, were so free and debonair as to have given rise to some quite unsupported scandal as to her faithfulness to her husband. Madrid was a perfect hotbed of tittle-tattle; everybody considered it necessary to be able to spin satirical verses, and as these were generally anonymous and in manuscript, the reputation of no one, high or low, was safe from attack.

The reaction from the rigid propriety of previous reigns led the Court of Philip IV. to assume a licence that quite shocked foreigners. Much of the day was passed in parading up and down the Calle Mayor (High Street) in coaches, and much of the night in summer in promenading in the dry bed of the river. Gallantry became the fashion, and ladies, very far from resenting, welcomed broad compliments and doubtful jests addressed to them by strangers in the streets.^[206] The palace itself, especially the new pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, built in the Prado for Philip by Olivares in 1632, was a notorious focus of intrigue; encouraged by the example of Philip himself, by far the most dissolute king of his line. From his early youth he had delighted in amateur acting, and under a pseudonym (Un Ingenio de esta Corte), wrote comedies himself, and delighted in the society of dramatic people.

Isabel was as keen a lover of the stage as her husband, and from the first days after the mourning for Philip III. was over, she began her favourite diversion of private theatricals in her own apartments. From October 1622, every Sunday and Thursday during the winter, as well as on holidays, comedies were performed by regular actors in her private theatre. Some of these comedies may be mentioned to show the taste of the Queen in such matters. ‘The Scorned Sweetheart,’ ‘The Loss of Spain,’ and ‘The Jealousy of a Horse,’ were three plays by Pedro ValdÉs, for which Isabel paid 300 reals (£6) each, the previous price having been £4. ‘Gaining Friends,’ ‘The Power of Opportunity,’ and ‘How our Eyes are Cheated,’ ‘The Fortunate Farmer,’ ‘The Woman’s Avenger,’ and ‘The Husband of His Sister,’ were others; and the total number of such plays represented in the Queen’s apartments in the palace during the winter of 1622–23, was forty-three, the fees for which reached 13,500 reals (£270).^[207]

Whilst the Prince of Wales was in Madrid the theatres in the palace, and the two public courtyard theatres in the capital, had a busy season. James Howell, writing from Madrid at the time,^[208] says, ‘There are many excellent poems made here since the Prince’s arrival, which are too long to couch in a letter. Yet I will venture to send you this one stanza of Lope de Vega:

‘There are comedians once a week come to the palace, where, under a great canopy, the Queen and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Princeps and Don Carlos on the Queen’s right hand, the King and the little Cardinal (i.e. the King’s boy-brother, Ferdinand) on the Infanta’s left hand.’

Philip’s notorious and scandalous infidelity to his wife, to whom, nevertheless, he was devotedly attached, did not prevent him from being violently jealous of any appearance of special loving homage to her beauty and charm. At one of the great cane tourneys to celebrate his accession in the summer of 1621, it was noticed that when Juan de Tassis, Count of Villamediana, rode with his troop of horsemen into the arena, he was wearing a sash covered with the silver coins called reales (royals), and flaunting as his motto, ‘My loves are reals’ (or royal). The Count was a spiteful poetaster, neither good looking nor young, but boastful and presumptuous; and the quidnuncs of the capital who flocked ‘Liar’s parade,’^[209] began to whisper that this was a challenge to the love of the Queen; and that the King, when his wife had remarked that Villamediana aimed well, had replied, ‘Yes, but he aims too high.’ It is now fairly certain that Villamediana’s homage was not intended for the Queen, but for another lady, named Francisca de Tavara, with whom the King was carrying on an intrigue at the time;^[210] and beyond her usual jovial heartiness there is no ground for supposing that Isabel gave Villamediana any encouragement.

But in the following spring of 1622, when the Court was at Aranjuez, a far more serious matter happened which produced tragic results for Villamediana. There was a great festival to celebrate Philip’s seventeenth birthday, and one of the attractions was a temporary theatre of canvas and wood erected in the ‘island garden,’ and beautifully adorned, in which was to be represented at night a comedy in verse written by the Count of Villamediana, and dedicated to the Queen. The comedy was called ‘La Gloria de Niquea,’ and Isabel was to represent the part of the goddess of beauty. All the Court was assembled, the King being in his seat with his brothers and sister, and the Queen in the retiring rooms behind the stage. The inside of the flimsy building was of course lit brilliantly with wax candles and lamps, whilst in the densely wooded gardens outside all was dark, when suddenly, at the moment that the prologue had been finished, a cry went up from behind the curtain: and then a long tongue of flame licked up the side, and immediately the whole of the stage was aflame. Panic seized upon the gaily bedizened crowd, and there was a rush to escape. In the confusion the King with difficulty found his way out, only to rush to the back of the edifice in search of his wife. Villamediana had been before him, and Philip found his wife half fainting in the Count’s arms.

Whatever may be the truth of the matter, it was soon noised about by the scandalmongers of Madrid that Villamediana had planned the whole affair, and had purposely set fire to the place that he might have an excuse for clasping the Queen in his arms. This was on the 8th April 1622; and when, in August of the same year, Villamediana was assassinated in his coach at nightfall in the Calle Mayor, within a few yards of his own house,^[211] all fingers pointed to Philip himself as the instigator of the crime; and the current jingle ascribed to Lope de Vega, in which it says that ‘el impulso fuÉ soberano’ echoed public opinion on the matter. No blame, however, in any case can be ascribed to Isabel, nor did Philip ever cease to hold her in affection and esteem.

She was a true daughter of her father, sage in counsel, bold in action, but with a gaiety of heart that often made her pleasures look frivolous and unbecoming. More Spanish than the Spaniards, she loved the bullfight and the theatre with an intensity that delighted her husband’s subjects, who were crazy for both pastimes, but in her boisterous vitality she would often countenance amusements contrived for her which we should now think coarse. Quarrels and fights between country women would be incited, or nocturnal tumults by torchlight in the gardens of Aranjuez or the Retiro, arranged for her to witness; snakes or other noxious reptiles would be secretly set loose on the floor of a crowded theatre to the confusion of the spectators, whilst the Queen almost laughed herself into a fit, at one of the windows overlooking the scene. The Court indeed during the first years of her married life was a merry one, notwithstanding its ostentatious devotion; and, although Olivares more than once urged the King to take a more active interest in the government and give less time to his amusements, the minister’s enemies, and he had many, averred that there was nothing he really liked better than to keep the young monarch immersed in pleasure, that he himself might rule supreme.^[212]

Much as Isabel herself loved pleasure, she began to be anxious, as troubles at home and abroad accumulated, at the complete abandonment of public affairs to the minister, and she urged Philip most earnestly to give more time to his duties. She had good reason to be distrustful, for she saw how weak to resist his impulses Philip was. His love affairs were legion, and as in the case of most of his courtiers, gallantry became a habit with him. There was, however, one affair of Philip’s that gave his wife more disquietude than most of the others. Olivares, it was said, in pursuance of his system, had agents all over Spain to send to Madrid the most talented actors and attractive actresses that could be found; and in 1627 there appeared as a member of a very clever troupe at the ‘Corral de la Pacheca’^[213] a girl of sixteen named Maria Calderon. She was no great beauty, but of extraordinary grace and fascination, with a voice so sweet, and speech so captivating, that she subdued all hearts. Philip saw her on the stage, and fell in love with her at once. She was summoned to the room overlooking the courtyard that served the King for a private box, in order that he might listen more closely to the cadence of her lovely voice, and the inflammable heart of Philip grew warmer still. From the Corral to the palace was but a step when the king willed it, and the ‘Calderona’ became Philip’s acknowledged mistress. Gifts and caresses were piled upon her by the love-lorn King; and the Calderona, proud of her position, turned a severe face to all other lovers, needing, as she said, no favour but royal favour.

On the 17th April 1629 she had a son by the King, to the great delight of Philip. The child Juan of Austria was the handsomest member of his house, and Philip’s affection for him from the first was intense; somewhat to Isabel’s chagrin when she herself bore him a son six months afterwards.^[214] But from the worthy ‘Calderona’ she had no more rivalry to fear. As soon as the actress could go out she sought the King, and, throwing herself at his feet, craved permission, humbly and tearfully, to devote the rest of her life to religion in a convent, now that she had been honoured by bearing a son to the King. Philip loved her still and hesitated, but she firmly refused to cohabit with him again; and with sorrow he gave way, and the Calderona became a nun.^[215]

Isabel’s children were many, five who died at, or soon after, their births having preceded the looked-for heir of Spain, Don Baltasar Carlos, that chubby, sturdy little Prince (born in October 1629) who prances his fat pony for ever upon the canvas of Velazquez. The fastuous taste of the King and Court was satisfied to the full in the baptism of Baltasar Carlos. The Countess of Olivares, who was as supreme in the palace as her husband was in the country, held the babe at the font, seated, as we are told by an eyewitness, upon ‘a seat of rock crystal, the most costly piece of furniture ever seen in Europe’; and presents were showered upon the midwife to the value of thirteen thousand ducats. As soon as the Queen was able to appear, her birthday (21st November) was celebrated on this occasion as it had never been before. Masquerades on horseback, torchlight parades, cane contests and bullfights succeeded each other, in all of which the King made a sumptuous appearance with his brother, Don Carlos; and the Queen, who had given an heir to the crown, was honoured to the full.

This splendid Court, strutting and posturing in rich garments upon the brink of the slope which was leading to Spain’s overthrow, had the advantage of being immortalised upon canvas by the greatest master of portraiture that ever lived, and laid bare to the very soul by some of the keenest satirists who ever wielded pen. The battue parties, in which Philip and his wife delighted, for the killing of stags in an enclosure, are brought before us as if we were present by the great picture in which Velazquez has portrayed the scene.^[216] In the park of Aranjuez, with the afternoon sun glinting through the trees, dark against a cloudless sky, the white canvas enclosure is erected. Into its gradually narrowing limits the frightened deer have been driven by mounted beaters, and at the only exit through the neck of the funnel are stationed the gentlemen, beneath a sort of platform of leafy boughs decked with red cloth, in which the ladies sit. The central figure of the twelve ladies, seated upon a crimson cushion, the better to see the sport, is the Queen, Isabel of Bourbon, dressed in a yellow robe, and wearing a white bow upon her head. Beneath the platform there await, mounted, the onrush of the deer, Philip and his two brothers, Carlos and Ferdinand, and, of course, Olivares. With their hunting knives, they slash at the deer as they fly past underneath the ladies’ bower, killing some, ham-stringing others, and leaving the rest that escape to be dealt with by the hounds awaiting them beyond. The ground beneath the bower is drenched with the warm blood of the butchered beasts, and the ladies smile approval at the sickly spectacle, whilst groups of courtiers, servants, and beaters, crowd the foreground and discuss the King’s prowess.

Another hunting scene, a little less repugnant to modern ideas, is the famous ‘Boar Hunt’ in the National Gallery in London. Here the canvas enclosure is in the hunting seat of the Pardo, and Philip, on his prancing mount, is just thrusting his forked javelin into the flank of a passing boar, whilst around him are his courtiers and companions in the sport, with Olivares nearest; and in the arena there are some clumsy blue carriages, with partially curtained windows innocent of glass except in front, in one of which sits Queen Isabel. The mules of her coach have, of course, been unharnessed and put out of harm’s way; but as the boars are agile and fierce, and had been known to leap into the coaches, the ladies themselves are armed with light javelins to repel them. Every detail of the life of this pleasure-loving Court has been fixed for us by the great painter: the ladies and gentlemen in the garb in which they lived, the dwarfs and buffoons who amused them, the palaces in which they intrigued; and, as a running accompaniment always, the sated weary face of the King from youth to age.

Fair and lymphatic, with dull blue eyes, and colourless sallow face, Philip had inherited the tradition that in all public appearances the King of Spain must never smile: and, mad votary of pleasure as he was, he never moved a muscle either in delight or annoyance whilst he was behind the footlights. Isabel was more spontaneous, and Spanish etiquette never crushed her. But as time went on and the clouds piled up for the coming tempest, her face grew heavier and her eyes more sad. Her portrait was painted many times by Velazquez, though only one specimen remains in the Museo del Prado, the equestrian figure, painted at about the time of Baltasar’s birth before misfortune had spoilt her life. Another likeness of her, now at Hampton Court, was painted ten years later (1638), shows the change wrought by trouble: but in all Velazquez’s representations of the Queen, we see the same characteristics: the large, expressive black eyes, the broad spacious forehead, and the strong full jaw; and, though the general aspect was more like her buxom mother than her clever father, Isabel’s countenance is alive with intelligence. In the later portraits the face grows weary, and the lower part is flaccid and heavy, but in all the painted portraits of Isabel by Velazquez, we have the woman herself before us; not a sensuous idealisation of her, like that painted by Rubens, and now at the Louvre.

If the painter has handed to us by his genius the exact reflection of this Court in a way that makes it live for us more vividly, perhaps, than any other, Quevedo and his followers, especially Velez de Guevara in El Diablo Cojuelo, have left in biting prose records no less faithful of its amusements, its follies, and crimes. By the light held up by the satirists we see an utterly decadent society, sunk, from the King downwards, into a slough of apathetic despondency of ever bettering things, whilst each individual strives madly to get as much pleasure as he can wring out of life, by fair means or foul, before the catastrophe overwhelms them all. Faith has decayed, and trembling superstition mixed with scoffing irreverence has taken its place: idleness is everywhere; poverty and squalor seek to masquerade as nobility, in order to claim the privilege to plunder which Court and Church alone possess, and labour is scorned as beneath the subjects of a King so wealthy and powerful as the sovereign of Spain is still assumed to be, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. A pretentious, hollow society it was, where all sought to share in the scramble, even at second or third hand, for the possessions of the State, oblivious to the fact that the State itself could possess nothing but what the individual citizens supplied.

Pretence was not limited to rank and material possessions. The noble poet and satirist kept a sycophantic man of letters to supply him with the lucubrations that moved the Court to admiration when they bore the name of a marquis, the cities swarmed with sham students, who pattered Latin tags, and cadged on the strength of a scholarship that was not theirs: and when showy pageants palled upon the King, and even his beloved comedies failed to spur his jaded wit, Philip could always find solace in the pedantic and affected academies and poetical contests over which he was so fond of presiding in his palace. There well-studied impromptus were mouthed, far-fetched conceits declaimed with a pomposity worthy of inspired prophecy, and preciosity run mad twisted and befouled the noble Castilian speech into the bastard Latiniparla, at which Quevedo gibed whilst himself revelling in it.

It was a Court of mean shams and squalid splendour, where all was rottenness but the fair outside. How ostentatious that outside was may be seen in the many records of court festivities that a bombastic age has handed to us. They are for the most part insufferably tedious catalogues of the dress and ornaments of pompously named nobles, courtiers, and favourites;^[217] but a few details of two great feasts in which Isabel took a conspicuous part, may be set forth here as a specimen of the diversions of her time. An entertainment, given to the sovereigns by the Countess of Olivares early in June 1631, in the garden of her brother, the Count of Monterey, inspired Olivares with the idea of outdoing all previous efforts in the same direction. The time was short, for the night of St. John (24th June) was the day fixed. Two comedies had to be written specially for the occasion; and Lope de Vega, the most marvellously prolific playwright that ever lived, managed to compose one of them in three days: whilst Quevedo and Antonio Mendoza, put on their mettle by Lope’s rapidity, wrote another jointly in a single day, whilst Olivarez himself snatched rare moments of leisure from State affairs, of which he was the universal minister, to superintend the rehearsals.

As if by enchantment, in a few days there sprang up in the gardens^[218] a sumptuous pavilion from which the King and Queen, with their favoured courtiers, might see the play. In front was erected the open air theatre, crowded with crystal lights and rare flowers, whilst all around were platforms for other guests, choristers, etc. At nine o’clock at night, Philip and Isabel alighted from their coach, and were received by Olivares to the sounds of soft music. When they had taken their seats, Philip on a chair of state, and Isabel on a pile of cushions, trays of presents were brought them, perfumes, embroidered scented handkerchiefs, and essences in cut glass flasks,^[219] Isabel being especially asked to accept in addition a jewelled Italian fan. Quevedo’s comedy, Quien mas miente medra mas (He who lies most thrives most) was represented first, after a musical prologue and a poetic welcome to Isabel recited by the famous actress Maria de Riquelme. The first representation occupied two hours and a half, we are told by an eyewitness: ‘during which many excellent dances were introduced; and although the players, having had little time to study, did not succeed in bringing out all the witty invention of the verses, it is certain that in many ordinary comedies together could not be found such an abundance of smart jests as in this one alone; for one day’s work was sufficient for Don Francisco de Quevedo’s wit to invent it all.’

When the first comedy was finished Philip and Isabel were led to the adjoining garden of the Duke of Maqueda,^[220] where there had been erected two bowers or summer-houses of leaves and blossoms, with a great number of coloured lights. These two arbors, one for the King and the other for the Queen, communicated by an arched passage of foliage, and were surrounded by similar erections for the suite, each bower being supplied with a table of light refreshments. In the King’s bower there was a hamper containing a long cloak of brown cloth, ornamented at the edge by scrolls of black and silver, solid silver hanging buttons, and loops serving for fastening. This was accompanied by a white wide-brimmed hat trimmed with brown feathers and a white aigrette, and a Walloon falling collar,^[221] which was still occasionally worn in place of the almost universal golilla. The King’s brothers were similarly supplied with disguises; whilst in the Queen’s bower the hamper contained a mirror, a brown woollen cloak embroidered at the bottom with sprigs of black silk and silver, the fastenings in this case also being solid silver hanging buttons and silver loops. The cloak was lined with silk of the same colour, hemmed and stitched with black and silver, and with it was a beautiful lace mantilla, a pleated lace ruff, and a white hat adorned with brown and white plumes and spangles. The whole Court was thus supplied with wraps and headgear against the night air. A light supper of surpassing daintiness was then served in the arbors, and the whole party, politely supposed to be disguised, proceeded to witness the second comedy; the Queen in her capricious garb, ‘adding to her natural and marvellous graciousness and beauty the extraordinary attraction of the strangeness of attire, without losing an atom of the dignity which distinguishes her Majesty, no less than the other admirable virtues and perfections which shine in her.’ We are assured that the unusual hats and garments worn by the King and his brothers were equally powerless to spoil their dignified appearance, ‘as they unite those qualities which vulgar censure and envy always strive to keep apart, namely, great beauty and a noble air:’ and the writer of the account from which I quote, nervous, apparently, at what the outside public would say to such a derogation of royalty as to don disguises, assures us that only a very select company was allowed to be present.^[222]

The comedy of Lope de Vega, ‘La Noche de San Juan,’ was then represented on the open air stage, and a short concert followed, after which the King and Queen were conducted to a flower-decked gallery erected in the other adjoining garden.^[223] Here, after midnight, another delicate refection was partaken of, the Count and Countess of Olivares serving the King and Queen, the whole banquet being so well organised that everything went off with the utmost decorum and quietness, except for the sweet music which enlivened the feast. When the day was just breaking the King and Queen entered their coach and, after a few turns in the Prado, rode home to the palace to bed. Olivares was praised to the skies for the organisation of this lavish feast, and the wonder is expressed that the licentious crowd of people who frequented the Prado at night should have been so awed by the presence of the King in the garden adjoining, that no disturbance or disorder took place.

This feast, fine as it was, was completely thrown in the shade by another which took place a few yards away, two years later (1633), when, at tremendous expense, and much unjust appropriation of other people’s property, Olivares run up and sumptuously furnished, in an amazing short time, the pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, which afterwards became Philip’s favourite place of residence, where his comedies, academies, concerts, recitations and masquerades could be indulged in with more propriety than in the gloomy, old half-Moorish palace on the cliff at the other end of the town. The house warming of the Buen Retiro lasted for a week in one continual round of tedious entertainment, in which invention and lavishness exhausted itself; but this was only the first of a series of such revels in the same place, for which any pretext was seized.

In January 1637, for instance, when Philip learnt that his brother-in-law, Ferdinand, had been elected King of the Romans, and future Emperor, an entertainment was ordered on a prodigious scale at the Buen Retiro. Three thousand men were set to work to level a hill that Pinelo (Anales) says ‘had stood since the world was made,’ for the purpose of building a wooden enclosure 608 feet long and 480 wide. Four hundred and eight large balconies or boxes surrounded this vast space, which was painted to look like masonry outside, whilst the inside was hung with silk and tapestries, and a silver railing ran round the front of the boxes. Nine hundred huge candelabra, ‘with four lights in each,’ illuminated the plaza; and the royal box, with its gilded roofs and pillars, and its green and gold appointments, glittered with mirrors which cast back the twinkling lights that fell upon them. Blazonry, imperial and royal crowns, scutcheons of arms and ‘conceited devices,’ were displayed on every side; and when, on the 15th February (Sunday), Philip came to the feast in state from the house, in the Carrera de San Geronimo, where he had robed, through a broad lane of people, with torch-bearers standing shoulder to shoulder throughout his route, people said that never had such a gorgeous show been seen in Spain.

With martial music, before them rode in his train, sixteen bands of nobles, twelve in each band, all dressed alike in black velvet and silver, and every man carrying in his right hand a lighted wax taper, whilst he restrained his prancing steed with the left. Last of all the bands came those of Olivares and the King, dressed like the others, but with some richer ornaments; and then great triumphal cars of strange and showy designs, made by Cosme Lotti, the clever Florentine. Each of them was 30 feet long and 46 feet high, lit with 100 torches, and contained innumerable figures and devices; and bands of music, the weight being so great that twenty-four bullocks were needed to draw each one, the bullocks themselves being hung with crimson, and accompanied by men in the garb of Orientals bearing silver torches. After them followed forty savages, whose clubs were torches; and as the great procession entered the enclosed space, and each party passed before Queen Isabel in the royal box, a fanfare sounded and the men saluted the sovereign; the whole procession, after having completed the circle, forming up in front of the royal box, whilst the mummers on the cars represented before the Queen ‘a colloquy of peace and war.’

Philip’s band of nobles in their musical ride and intricate evolutions, of course excelled all others; and the King, acclaimed as the champion cavalier of his realm, ascended to his wife’s box to lay at her feet the guerdon of his prowess, and witness the rest of the feast at her side. For ten days thereafter the feasting and vain show went on, comedies, concerts, banquets, balls, water fetes on the lake, illumination of the woods, bull fights by torchlight, a poetical contest and greasy poles; a cotillon in which the party pelted each other with eggshells full of perfume, and a hundred other devices to waste time and money,^[224] and to beguile Philip from the looming affairs of State, now wholly managed by the strong, dark-faced man with the big head and bowed shoulders, whom most people hated for his imperiousness and his greed, the King’s bogey as some called him, the second King of Spain, the Count Duke of Olivares.

The brilliant hopes of peace and retrenchment which had greeted Philip’s accession had all been falsified. The Catholic union with France represented by the marriages of Philip with Isabel and of Louis XIII. with the Infanta Anna, had failed before the marriages themselves were complete; for the ambitious projects of Philip II. were again being revived by Olivares, who dreamed once more that Spain, cast down in the dust as she was, might yet hold the hegemony over the powers of Europe, and dictate to Christendom the articles of its faith. It was a vain, foolish, vision in the circumstances, for not of material strength alone had Spain been stripped, but of the real secret of its short predominance, the firm conviction of divine selection and of the invincibility of its sacred cause. The country was as politically heterogeneous as ever, whilst it had lost the homogeneity it had borrowed from religious exaltation; and yet, with its rival, France, growing daily in national solidarity and contributive capability under Richelieu, Spain was hurried by Olivares into a perfect fever for conquest, and to the arrogant reassertion of its old exploded claims.

The employment of Spanish troops to overrun the Palatinate and reduce Bohemia, and the recrudescence of the interminable war against the Dutch, had knit the two branches of the house of Austria closer together than ever, and strengthened the Emperor immensely. It was clear, that unless Richelieu struck promptly and boldly, France would once again, if Olivares had his way, be shut in by a circle of enemies. France and Savoy, alarmed at the revived pretensions of Spain, made common cause with the protestant powers, and soon all Europe was at war. Spain was ruined, but at least the court nobles and the church were rich, and the national pride was excited to the utmost. The war was primarily against France, but Isabel of Bourbon was as fiercely Spanish as if her father had not been Henry the Great, and she herself set the example of sacrifice. The jewels she loved so well were sold to provide men-at-arms; the ladies, who took their tone from the Queen, sent their valuables the same way; the nobles, aroused by appeals to their pride, contributed voluntarily a million ducats to the war fund; and the church opened its hoards to the extent of raising and maintaining twenty thousand troops. All French property in Spain was confiscated, and the war for a time was carried on with an energy that reminded men of the great times of the Emperor. At first the Spaniards and Austrians carried all before them. Tilly in Germany, Spinola in Flanders, and Fadrique de Toledo on the sea, revived the glory of the house of Austria; and Spanish pride rose once more to crazy arrogance. Philip the Great, the Planet King, were the titles already given to the idle young man, whom Olivares flattered and controlled. But when the first gust of enthusiasm was past, it was clear that Spain could not provide funds to carry on war by land and sea the world over; and peace was made with England; Savoy was won over, and thenceforward it was a duel to the death between the house of Austria and the house of France, between Olivares and Richelieu.

For years the struggle went on with varying military phases, but with the inevitable result of reducing poverty-stricken, idle Spain to absolute penury. Every device to raise more money was tried, and all in vain. Crushing taxes upon production, debasement of the coinage, confiscation, repudiation and robbery, were but weak resources to maintain a great foreign war by a bankrupt State; and unless Olivares confessed failure more money must be had. The Cortes of Castile was powerless to check the national waste, but the Cortes of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, were still vigorous, and resisted all attempts to extort money except by their votes, grudgingly given only after much haggling. Olivares had understood as clearly as Ferdinand and Isabel had done, that for the King of Spain to be powerful enough to cope with France he must control the whole resources of Spain. The bond of religious exaltation had dissolved, and could not be restored; but the unification on political lines might be effected by weakening the separate autonomous institutions of the outlying States.

This was the plan of Olivares; doubtless a wise one if pursued patiently and cautiously in times of peace and in an era of interior reforms. But Olivares, like Ferdinand the Catholic before him, needed national unity in a hurry, in order to obtain resources to fight France, not for the purpose of making Spain a homogeneous peaceful nation,^[225] and his reckless attempts to obtain money for his war with France by over-riding the autonomous privileges of Catalonia and Portugal, and extorting taxation without parliamentary sanction, precipitated the ruin that had long threatened. In June 1640 Barcelona flamed out in revolt against Castile, and soon all Catalonia, and part of Aragon and Valencia, had repudiated the dominion of Philip, and had made common cause with France. Six months later, in December 1640, Portugal for similar reasons proclaimed the Duke of Braganza king, and cast off for ever the yoke of Spain.

Philip, plunged in his pleasures, as we have seen, was kept in the dark. The Catalan insurgents were for him merely a band of rioters, as Olivares assured him, who would soon be suppressed; and when Portugal proclaimed its freedom the minister had the effrontery to rush into Philip’s chamber with an appearance of joy, and congratulated him upon gaining a new dukedom and a vast estate. ‘How?’ asked the King. ‘Sire,’ replied Olivares, ‘the Duke of Braganza has gone mad and revolted against your Majesty. All his belongings are now forfeit and are yours.’ But Philip knew better, and for once lost his marble serenity. Blow after blow fell upon him. Starving subjects, a crippled trade, an empty treasury, and his richest realms in revolt: these were the results of his twenty years rule, and all he had to show was the hollow glory of battles gained far away in quarrels not his own.

He was good-hearted and really loved his subjects, but he had never learnt to rule, for he had never ruled his own passions or curbed his inclinations; and he was in despair when the truth came to him, bit by bit. Frantic prayers; tears and vows of amendment were his way of dealing with all the blows of fortune: but there were others at his side who were more practical and determined than he. For years the yoke of Olivares and his wife had galled the neck of Isabel. Fond of pleasure as she was, she had a statesman’s mind, and her love for her promising son Baltasar, now aged thirteen, and the pride of his parents’ heart, had sharpened her wits as she saw his great inheritance slipping away from him under the rule of a minister whom she personally disliked for his rudeness even to her.^[226] Again and again she had urged Philip to play the man and head his own armies in the field. Philip was willing, even eager, to do so; but Olivares would not hear of it, and the breach widened between the Queen and the minister. Olivares was detested by most of the principal nobles and churchmen. His policy of war could only be paid for out of the plunder derived from them, since all other classes were reduced to poverty, and the elements of discontent gradually grouped around Isabel.

At last Isabel’s prayers, for once, overrode Olivares’ counsel, and Philip stood firm in his determination to lead his own armies to rescue Catalonia from the French. Olivares left no stone unturned to defeat the Queen. Obedient physicians certified that the voyage would injure the King’s health, submissive Councils voted against the risk of the sovereign’s life in war, and constitutional lawyers laid down that it was not proper for the King to go. Philip, tired out at last, snatched a report of the Council from the hands of the Protonotary who was about to present it, and, tearing it into pieces, cried, ‘Bring me no more reports about my going to Catalonia, but prepare for the journey, for go I will.’ The royal confessor—of course a creature of Olivares—added his remonstrance against the King’s journey, but was at once stopped by Philip, and was told that if Olivares did not want to go he could stay away; and if he was not at Aranjuez when the King passed through he would not wait for him.

It was a victory for Isabel that presaged the great minister’s fall; for Olivares dared not leave his master’s side, and the Queen remained in the capital as Regent. Every device was adopted to delay the King’s progress. Money was wanted, and when that had been extorted, in many cases by imprisonment,^[227] the lavish and pompous preparations for the journey were endless. Nine state coaches and six litters, a hundred and three saddle horses, with crowds of courtiers, were considered necessary for a campaign; and every grandee and titled nobleman in Spain was warned that he must join the royal train. When, at last, after visits to numberless altars, Philip took leave of his wife at Vacia Madrid in April 1642, it was only to be delayed on the way for many weeks in ostentatious feasts, hunting parties and frivolities, before he at length arrived at Saragossa. By that time Aragon itself was half overrun by the French, and Philip, fully awake now to the terrible condition of affairs, grew ever more gloomy with his minister, who even now found means to keep the King isolated at Saragossa, miles away from the hostilities, in discounted inaction.

In the meanwhile Isabel in Madrid, free from the terrifying presence of the favourite, organised the party of his opponents. She had always been a favourite with the crowd for her popular manners, but now she won their hearts completely; for they knew she was against the man upon whose back they laid all their woes. She visited the guards and barracks, mustered the regiments in the capital and addressed to them harangues, exciting their loyalty to the King and Spain. Once more she sacrificed her ornaments, devoted herself to the comfort of the soldiers, raised a new regiment at her own expense in her son’s name, presided over the Councils, and infused more activity and enthusiasm in the administration than had been seen for years.

Isabel of Bourbon had seized her opportunity. Up to that time she had been simply an appanage of the splendours of the idle King; now, with the power of a Regent and the favour of the people, she became the strongest personality in Spain. Her letters to the King were vigorous and brave; and he thenceforward treated her with greater consideration, as if up to that time he had never realised that his wife was a woman of talent and spirit. Philip was kept idle at Saragossa, away from his army and his nobles for months. Once he acted on his own initiative and appointed a new commander-in-chief, the Marquis of LeganÉs, a kinsman of Olivares; but the appointment was unfortunate. At the first engagement afterwards Philip’s army was utterly routed before Lerida; and as winter approached, with a badly fed, unpaid dwindling force, quarrelling generals, and his best provinces held by France, Philip returned to Madrid with an aching heart at the end of the year 1642.

He found the tone in his palace very different from when he had left it. There were four women, all of whom had Philip’s ear, and who hated Olivares. The Queen, Anna of Austria, Queen of France, Philip’s sister, the Duchess of Mantua (Margaret of Savoy), his cousin, who had been his viceroy in Portugal, and who rightly blamed the minister for the loss of the country; she, moreover, being kept in semi-imprisonment at OcaÑa by the minister’s orders, and DoÑa Anna de Guevara, the King’s old nurse, who was also forbidden at Court by the same influence. These ladies were all in communication with each other and with the nobles who were Olivares’ enemies, led by the Counts of Paredes and Castrillo. ‘My good intentions and my son’s innocence,’ Isabel told Paredes, ‘must for once serve the King for eyes: for if he sees through those of the Count Duke much longer, my son will be reduced to a poor King of Castile.’

A week or two after the King’s return, Isabel struck her blow at the tottering favourite. The first sign of the event was the escape of the King’s Savoy cousin, the Duchess of Mantua, from OcaÑa, and her arrival at Madrid late at night, after a ride of forty miles through a storm of sleet. Olivares was furious, and kept her waiting for four hours before he assigned her two wretched rooms in one of the royal convents. But Isabel received her in the palace with open arms the next morning. Then the banished nurse, Anna de Guevara, appeared in the palace in defiance of Olivares. That afternoon Philip visited his wife’s room, and she, kneeling before him, with little Baltasar in her arms, implored him for the sake of their son to dismiss his evil minister before it was too late to rescue the realms his ineptitude had lost. In a torrent of words Isabel poured forth the pent-up complaints of years; the wars that had ruined the country, the starving people, the lost provinces, the waste and frivolity that had been the rule of their lives, the insults and slights which she, personally, had suffered at the hands of Olivares and his wife, and the shame that a king, into whose hands God had confided so sacred a task, should delegate it to others.

Philip was deeply moved, though he said nothing; but as he left his wife’s chamber, he was confronted in the corridor by the kneeling figure of his beloved foster-mother, Anna de Guevara. She, too, formed her impeachment of Olivares in impassioned words, and Philip could only reply, ‘You have spoken the truth.’ Then for two hours the Queen and the Duchess of Mantua were closeted with the King, and the victory was won.^[228] That night, 17th January 1643, Olivares was dismissed. He struggled for days to regain his influence over the King, but tried in vain; for Philip, like most weak men, was obstinate when once his mind was made up, and so, ruined and degraded, the Count Duke turned his back upon the Court he had ruled, and went to madness and death, leaving Isabel of Bourbon, the mistress of the situation, the ‘King’s only minister,’ as he said soon after, when he asked the nuns of shoeless Carmelites to pray for his ‘minister.’

Madrid went wild with joy at Olivares’ fall. ‘Isabels have always saved Spain,’ the people cried, as the King and Queen with the Duchess of Mantua went to the convent church of the barefoots to give thanks; ‘Philip is King of Spain, at last, and will save his country.’ But it needed much more than shouting to save Spain. Philip, spurred by his wife, plucked up more energy than ever before. He would be his own minister in future, and would take the field as soon as spring came, and wrest Catalonia from the French. Before that could be done, Philip’s army met in Flanders with the greatest defeat it had ever sustained, a blow from which the reputation of the famous Spanish infantry never recovered. His young brother, Cardinal Ferdinand, had died two years before, and his place in Flanders had been taken by the Portuguese noble Mello. He was a good soldier; but CondÉ, young as he was, out-generalled him: and the defeat of Rocroy made it certain that France, and not Spain, would in future lead Europe. But yet the soil of Spain itself must be redeemed from the French invaders: and again, through the summer of 1643, Philip struggled manfully to regain his lost dominion; whilst Isabel, as Regent in Madrid, organised, directed, and encouraged, with a spirit and energy that won for her the fervent love of her husband’s loyal subjects. Some success attended him, for he captured Lerida from the French: but the war was a terrible drain, and in the campaign of the following year, 1644, failure followed failure.

The poor, weary, King’s heart was almost breaking under his many troubles, when he was brought into contact with the saintly woman, who until the end was his one refuge and solace, the Venerable nun, Maria de Agreda, whose exhortations and prayers sustained him in his hardest trials, which were yet to come. Philip was in Saragossa at the beginning of October when news came to him that his wife was ill. Sending his new favourite—for his good resolves in that respect had soon failed—Luis de Haro, to the front, to acquaint the army of the King’s reason for leaving, he started at once for Madrid.

On the 28th September 1644, Isabel had suffered from some sort of choleraic attack with much fever. She was copiously bled in the arms, and seemed to improve, but was soon seen to be suffering from violent erysipelas in the face; the disease soon spreading to the throat, which was almost closed, as if by diphtheria. The patient was bled eight times more, but still the inflammation grew; and, as usual with Spanish doctors, when bleeding failed, the charms of the church were resorted to. On the 4th October the last sacrament was administered, and the dead body of Saint Isidore was brought to the sick chamber. This having failed to effect a cure, the more sacred relic still, the miraculous image of the Virgin of Atocha was brought in procession from its shrine into the convent of St. Thomas, at Madrid, with the intention of placing it for adoration by the Queen’s bed. When Isabel’s permission was asked, she said that she was unworthy of the honour of such a visit, and Prince Baltasar visited the image instead, to implore upon his knees that his mother’s life might be spared. ‘There was no church nor convent in Madrid that did not bring out in procession its crucifixes and most sacred images in prayer for the Queen’s health, and the whole people wailed fervently their prayers and rogations that her life might be granted.’^[229]

On the 5th of October, the dying woman tried to make her new will; but she was too weak, and only left verbal authority before witnesses to the King to carry out her intentions. At noon on that day she sent for a fleur de lys, which formed one of the ornaments in the crown, and in which was encased a fragment of the true cross. This she worshipped fervently. Her two children were brought to her, Baltasar and the girl Maria Theresa, but she would not let them approach her for fear of contagion, though she blessed them fervently from afar. ‘There are plenty of Queens for Spain,’ she sighed, but princes and princesses are scarce. The next day, as the great clock of the palace marked a quarter past four in the afternoon, Isabel of Bourbon breathed her last, aged forty-one. Garbed as a Franciscan nun, the body was carried that night to the royal convent of barefoots; and thence the day after in a leaden coffin, encased in another of brocade, it was borne back to the palace to lie in state amidst blazing tapers, nodding plumes, and all the pomp and circumstance of royal mourning.

In the meanwhile, Philip was hurrying from Aragon, a prey to the keenest anxiety. At Maranchon, about fifty miles from the capital, where the King had alighted at a wretched inn, the news came that the Queen was dead. The ministers and courtiers around the King forbore to tell him for a time, out of mere pity; for the journey and anxiety had told upon him ‘and he had only just dined.’ But a few miles further on, at Almadrones, the news was broken to him in his carriage by those who accompanied him. A terrible burst of grief, and an order that he might be left alone in his sorrow, proved that Philip, for all his faithlessness, was fond of his wife; and then, rather than enter the city where the Queen’s body lay, he turned aside and sought solitude at the Pardo,^[230] where he was soon joined by his son Baltasar, whilst, with the usual heavy pomp at dead of night, the body of Isabel was carried across the bleak Castilian tableland to the new jasper vault in the Escorial, which, from very dread, she had never dared to enter in her lifetime.

Three days after Isabel’s death, the sainted mystic of Agreda saw, as she asserted, the phantom of the Queen before her, asking for the prayers of the godly to liberate her from the pains she was suffering in purgatory, for the vain splendour of her attire during her life.^[231] To the nun Philip’s cry of pain went up, whilst to all the rest of the world he turned a leaden face. On the 15th November he wrote—‘Since the Lord was pleased to take from me to himself the Queen, who is now in heaven, I have wanted to write to you, but the great distress I am in, and the business with which I am overwhelmed, have hitherto prevented me from doing so. I find myself more oppressed with sorrow than seems bearable, for I have lost in one person alone all that I can lose in this world: and if it were not that I know, according to the faith I hold, that God sends to us that which is best and wisest, I know not what would become of me. But this thought, and this alone, makes me suffer my grief with utter resignation to the will of God; and I must confess to you that I have needed much help from on high to bring me to bear this cross patiently. I wanted to ask you to pray to God very earnestly for me in this dire trouble, and to aid me in asking Him to grant me grace to offer up this sorrow to Him, and take advantage of it for my own salvation.’^[232]

A yet more terrible trial for him came two years later; and a yet more heartbroken appeal to the nun for prayers, and to God to save him from rebellion against his hard fate, burst from the King’s breaking heart when his only son died in his budding manhood, and left Philip, aged by suffering, to face matrimony again for the sake of leaving an heir to the crown of sorrow that was weighing him down.

Isabel of Bourbon died bravely, as she had lived. She was a Frenchwoman, married to bring about a friendship between France and Spain, and the two countries were at war continually from the time that her marriage was completed to the day of her death. In her time the sun of Spain sank as surely as the day of France brightened, and yet she never gloried in the triumph of the land of her birth, and kept faithful to the end to the Spain which she loved so well. It would be unfair to credit her with so clear and high a soul as either of the previous Isabels; but hers was a brave, sturdy, heart that accepted things as they were if she was unable to mend them; and, like her father before her, she enjoyed herself as much as she could whilst doing her duty valiantly and well.