In the preceding chapter, we have seen the pain occasioned to Isabella by the arrest of Carlos. Although so far a gainer by it as it opened to her own posterity the way to the succession, she wept, as the ambassador Fourquevaulx tells us, for two days, over the misfortune of her step-son, until forbidden by Philip to weep any longer.[1554] During his confinement, as we have seen, she was not permitted to visit him,—not even to soften the bitterness of his dying hour. And how much her presence would have soothed him, at such a time, may be inferred from the simple memorandum found among his papers, in which he assigns her the first place among his friends, as having{495} been ever the most loving to him.[1555] The same affection, however we may define it, which he had borne her from the first, he retained to the last hour of his life. All that was now granted to Isabella was the sad consolation of joining with the Princess Joanna, and the few friends who still cherished the memory of Carlos, in celebrating his funeral obsequies.

Not long after that event, it was announced that the queen was pregnant; and the nation fondly hoped that it would find a compensation for the loss of its rightful prince, in the birth of a new heir to the throne. But this hope was destined soon to be destroyed. Owing to some mismanagement on the part of the physicians, who, at an early period, misunderstood the queen's situation, the medicines they gave her had an injurious effect on her constitution.[1556] It is certain that Isabella placed little confidence in the Spanish doctors, or in their prescriptions.[1557] There may have been good ground for her distrust; for their vigorous applications savor not a little of the Sangrado school of practice, directed quite as much against the constitution of the patient as against his disease. About the middle of September a fever set in, which, though not violent, was so obstinate as to defy all the efforts of the physicians to reduce it. More alarming symptoms soon followed. The queen frequently swooned. Her extremities became torpid. Medicines were of no avail, for her stomach refused to retain them.[1558] Processions were everywhere made to the churches, and young and old joined in prayers for her recovery. But these prayers were not heard. The strength of Isabella continued rapidly to decline, and by the last of September her life was despaired of. The physicians declared that science could go no further, and that the queen's only hope must be in Heaven.[1559]—In Heaven she had always trusted; nor was she so wedded to the pomps and glories of the world, that she could not now willingly resign them.

As her ladies, many of them her countrywomen, stood weeping around her bed, she endeavored to console them under their affliction, kindly expressing the interest she took in their future welfare, and her regret that she had not made them a bitter mistress;—"as if," says a contemporary, who has left a minute record of her last moments, "she had not been always more of a mother than a mistress to them all!"[1560]

On the evening of the second of October, as Isabella felt herself drawing{496} near her end, she made her will. She then confessed, partook of the sacrament, and, at her desire, extreme unction was administered to her. Cardinal Espinosa and the king's confessor, the bishop of Cuenca, who were present, while they offered her spiritual counsel and consolation, were greatly edified by her deportment; and, giving her their parting benediction, they went away deeply affected by the spirit of Christian resignation which she displayed.[1561]

Before daybreak, on the following morning, she had her last interview with Philip. We have the account of it from Fourquevaulx. "The queen spoke to her husband very naturally," says the ambassador, "and like a Christian. She took leave of him for ever, and never did princess show more goodness and piety. She commended to him her two daughters, and her principal attendants, beseeching him to live in amity with the king of France, her brother, and to maintain peace,—with other discourse, which could not fail to touch the heart of a good husband, which the king was to her. He showed, in his replies, the same composure as she did, and promised to obey all her requests, but added, he did not think her end so near. He then withdrew,—as I was told,—in great anguish, to his own chamber."[1562] Philip sent a fragment of the true cross, to comfort his wife in her last moments. It was the most precious of his relics, and was richly studded with pearls and diamonds.[1563] Isabella fervently kissed the sacred relic, and held it, with the crucifix, in her hand, while she yet lived.

Not long after the interview with her husband, the ambassador was summoned to her bedside. He was the representative of her native land, and of the dear friends there she was never more to see. "She knew me," writes Fourquevaulx, "and said, 'You see me in the act of quitting this vain world, to pass to a more pleasant kingdom; there, as I hope, to be for ever with my God. Tell my mother, the queen, and the king, my brother, to bear my death with patience, and to comfort themselves with the reflection, that no happiness on earth has ever made me so content, as the prospect now does of approaching my Creator. I shall soon be in a better situation to do them service, and to implore God to take them and my brothers under his holy protection. Beseech them, in my name, to watch over their kingdom, that an end may be put to the heresies which have spread there. And I will pray Heaven, in its mercy, to grant that they may take my death with patience, and hold me for happy.'"[1564]

The ambassador said a few words of comfort, endeavoring to give her, if possible, some hopes of life. But she answered, "You will soon know how near I am to my end. God has given me grace to despise the world and its grandeur, and to fix all my hopes on him and Jesus Christ. Never did a thought occasion me less anxiety than that of death."

"She then listened to the exhortations of her confessor, remaining in full possession of her consciousness, till a few minutes before her death. A slight restlessness seemed to come over her, which soon subsided, and she expired{497} so tranquilly that it was impossible to fix the moment when she gave up the ghost. Yet she opened her eyes once, bright and glancing, and it seemed as if she would address me some further commands,—at least, her looks were fixed on me."[1565]

Not long before Isabella's death, she was delivered of a daughter. Its birth was premature, and it lived only to be baptized. The infant was laid in the same coffin with its mother; and, that very evening, their remains were borne in solemn procession to the royal chapel.[1566] The tolling of the bells in the churches and monasteries throughout the city announced the sad tidings to the people, who filled the air with their cries, making everywhere the most passionate demonstrations of grief;[1567] for the queen, says Brantôme, "was regarded by them not merely with feelings of reverence, but of idolatry."[1568]

In the chapel were gathered together whatever was illustrious in the capital,—the high ecclesiastics, and the different religious bodies, the grandees and cavaliers of the court, and the queen's ladies of honor. At the head of these stood the duchess of Alva, the mistress of the robes, with the duchess of Feria—an English lady, married to the Spanish ambassador at the court of Mary Tudor—and the princess of Eboli, a name noted in history. The coffin of the deceased queen, covered with its gorgeous pall of brocade, was placed on a scaffold shrouded in black, and surrounded with numerous silver sconces bearing wax tapers, that shed a gloomy lustre over the scene.[1569] The services were performed amidst the deepest stillness of the audience, unless when broken by the wailings of the women, which mingled in sad harmony with the chant of the priests and the sweet and solemn music that accompanied the office for the dead.[1570]

Early on the following morning the coffin was opened in presence of the duchess of Alva and the weeping ladies of her train, who gazed for the last time on features still beautiful in death.[1571] The duchess then filled the coffin{498} with flowers and sweet-scented herbs; and the remains of mother and child were transported by the same sorrowing company to the convent of the barefooted Carmelites. Here they reposed till the year 1573, when they were borne, with the remains of Carlos, to the stately mausoleum of the Escorial; and the populace, as they gazed on the funeral train, invoked the name of Isabella as that of a saint.[1572]

In the course of the winter, Cardinal Guise arrived from France with letters of condolence from Charles the Ninth to his royal brother-in-law. The instructions to the cardinal do not infer any distrust, on the part of the French monarch, as to the manner of his sister's death. The more suspicious temper of the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, is seen in her directions to Fourquevaulx to find out what was said on the subject of her daughter's death, and to report it to her.[1573]—It does not seem that the ambassador gathered any information of consequence, to add to his former details.

Philip himself may have had in his mind the possible existence of such suspicions, when he told the cardinal that "his best consolation for his loss was derived from his reflection on the simple and excellent life of the queen. All her attendants, her ladies and maids, knew how well he had treated her, as was sufficiently proved by the extraordinary sorrow which he felt at her death. Hereupon," continues the cardinal, "he broke forth into a panegyric on her virtues, and said, were he to choose again, he could wish nothing better than to find just such another."[1574]—It was not long before Philip made the attempt. In eighteen months from the date of his conversation with the cardinal, the thrice-widowed husband led to the altar his fourth and last wife, Anne of Austria,—like her predecessor, as we have seen, the destined bride of his son. The facility with which her imperial parents trusted the young princess to the protection of Philip maybe thought to intimate pretty clearly that they, at least, had no misgivings as to the king's treatment of his former wife.

Isabella, at her decease, was but twenty-three years of age, eight of which she had been seated on the throne of Spain. She left two children, both daughters;—Catherine, afterwards married to the duke of Savoy; and Clara Eugenia, who became with her husband, the Archduke Albert, joint ruler of the Netherlands, and who seems to have enjoyed a greater share of both the love and the confidence of Philip, than he ever vouchsafed to any other being.

Such is the story of Queen Isabella, stripped of the coloring of romance, for which, in truth, it has been quite as much indebted to the pen of the historian as to that of the poet. From the whole account, it appears, that, if Carlos, at any time, indulged a criminal passion for his step-mother, such a passion was never requited or encouraged by Isabella, who seems to have felt for him only the sentiments that were justified by their connection, and by the appeal which his misfortunes made to her sympathy. Notwithstanding some feelings of resentment, not unnatural, when, in the words of Brantôme, "he had been defrauded of so fair a prize," there is yet little evidence that the prince's passion for her rose higher than the sentiments of love and gratitude{499} which her kindness might well have awakened in an affectionate nature.[1575] And that such, with all his errors, was the nature Carlos, is shown, among other examples, by his steady attachment to Don John of Austria, his uncle, and by his devotion to his early preceptor, the bishop of Osma.

There is no proof that Philip was, at any time, displeased with the conduct of his queen, or that he regarded his son in the light of a rival. Least of all is there anything in the history of the time to show that he sacrificed his wife to his jealousy.[1576] The contrary is well established by those of her own countrymen who had free access to her during her lifetime,—some of them in the hour of her death,—whose correspondence with her family would not have failed to intimate their suspicions, had there been anything to suspect.

Well would it be for the memory of Philip the Second, could the historian find no heavier sin to lay to his charge than his treatment of Isabella. From first to last, he seems to have regarded her with the indulgence of an affectionate husband. Whether she ever obtained such an ascendancy over his close and cautious nature as to be allowed to share in his confidence and his counsels, may well be doubted. Her temper would seem to have been too gentle, too devoid of worldly ambition, to prompt her to meddle with affairs for which she was fitted neither by nature nor education. Yet Brantôme assures us, that she exercised a most salutary influence over her lord in his relations with France, and that the value of this influence was appreciated in later times, when the growing misunderstandings between the two courts were left to rankle, without any friendly hand to heal them.[1577] "Her death," he continues, "was as bitter to her own nation as it was to the Spaniards; and if the latter called her 'the Queen of Peace and Goodness,' the former with no less reason styled her 'the Olive-branch.'"[1578] "But she has passed away,"{500} he exclaims, "in the sweet and pleasant April of her age,—when her beauty was such that it seemed as if it might almost defy the assaults of time."[1579]

The queen occupies an important place in that rich gallery of portraits in which Brantôme has endeavored to perpetuate the features of his contemporaries. In no one of them has he traced the lineaments with a more tender and delicate hand. Even the breath of scandal has had no power to dim the purity of their expression. Of all that illustrious company which the artist has brought in review before the eyes of posterity, there is no one to whom he has so truly rendered the homage of the heart, as to Elizabeth of France.

But from these scenes of domestic sorrow, it is time that we should turn to others of a more stirring and adventurous character.

END OF VOLS. I. AND II.

LONDON C. WHITING, BEAUFORT-HOUSE, DUKE-STREET, LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS.