The romantic story that makes her fall in love with this poor unwholesome boy may be put aside as baseless; but it is probably true that her own charms, added to his jealousy and hate of his father, made him fall in love with her. The letters Isabel wrote to her mother at the time all speak of Philip as a most affectionate husband, and of Don Carlos simply with pity for his ill-health; whilst Catharine’s replies constantly urge her to incline her stepson to a marriage with her sister Margaret; ‘or you will be the most unfortunate woman in the world if your husband dies, and the Prince (Carlos) has for a wife any one but your own sister.’ Unfortunately the youth was unable to hide his extravagant affection for his young stepmother; and soon all the French ladies were nodding and shrugging their shoulders at the romance that was passing before their eyes, which probably Isabel herself hardly understood.

The need for Catharine to draw personally nearer to Spain was greater, and yet more difficult, than ever after the death, in November 1560, of her young son Francis II. There was no fear now of France being drawn into war again for the benefit of Mary Stuart, but, on the other hand, Mary Stuart herself, being a widow, might marry Don Carlos, and become, by Spanish aid and the efforts of the English Catholics, Queen of Great Britain, in which case France would be isolated indeed.^[182] Cardinal Lorraine, and afterwards Mary herself, bade briskly for this match; but, though Philip shrank from saying so, Carlos was, he knew, unfit for marriage altogether. In answer to Catharine’s constant pressure upon her daughter to persuade Carlos to marry Margaret, Isabel repeatedly assured her that she would do her best, and she appears to have made a sort of alliance with his aunt Joan to forward her cause if the marriage with Margaret was found impossible.

Philip’s sister, the wife of Maximilian, heir to the empire, wrote to Isabel early in 1561, asking her to lend her help to the suit then being pressed by the imperial ambassador for the marriage of Carlos with one of his Austrian cousins, the Archduchess Anne,^[183] and Isabel, in giving an account of this to her mother, says that she showed the letter to Princess Joan, who had received a similar letter, and angrily expressed her opinion to Isabel that the plan was directed against her (Joan); with which opinion Isabel agreed. ‘I spoke to the King about it,’ wrote Isabel to her mother, ‘telling him that the Queen of Bohemia had made one exception (before her daughter’s claim was put forward), whereas I made two; namely, first my sister, and, secondly, the Princess (Joan). He replied that his son was yet so young, and in such a condition, that there was plenty of time for everything yet, though the Prince has got over his quartan fever.’^[184] To the imperial ambassador Philip gently hinted also that his son’s infirmity of mind and body made it impossible to arrange seriously for his marriage; but Catharine was not to be put off easily, and Isabel did her best to obey her.

The Queen-Mother, sending her own portrait and that of her son, the new boy King of France, Charles IX., to her daughter, included in the parcel a likeness of her daughter Margaret; and one of Isabel’s maids writes of the joy that the pictures of her dear ones gave to the Queen; who, she says, after having recited her prayers at night in church, went to her chamber, and said them again before her mother’s portrait. When the precious portraits were unwrapped Princess Joan was there to admire them, and soon Don Carlos came in. ‘Which is the prettiest of them?’ he was asked. ‘The chiquita,’ he naturally replied; whereupon one of the ladies drove home the lesson by saying, ‘Yes, you are quite right, for she is the most fit for you’; whereupon he burst out laughing.^[185] Isabel herself wrote joyfully to her mother that Carlos was pleased with Margaret’s portrait, and had repeated to her three or four times laughing that the ‘little one was the prettiest; if she was like that;’ whereupon Isabel assured him that she was ‘bien faite,’ and officious Madame de Clermont interjected that she would make a good wife for him, to which the lad, though he giggled, made no reply. Philip also, probably to please his wife, confessed that the portrait of her younger sister was very beautiful: but it was noticed that, simultaneously with these transparent matrimonial intrigues, he suddenly began to pay ostentatious attention to his sister Joan, whose marriage with her nephew Carlos was always a possibility to play off against other matches proposed.

The kindliest relations were now established between Philip and his young wife, and though he was usually absorbed in governmental detail early and late, Isabel’s life was not a gloomy one. The two boys of Maximilian, King of the Romans, the future emperor, and of Philip’s sister Maria, were being brought up in the Spanish Court; and though they were kept very close to their studies, they were allowed to come and see Isabel and her ladies every afternoon to dance and romp as they pleased. Carlos also took every opportunity of being in the company of his stepmother, and the brilliant young Don Juan of Austria, Philip’s half-brother, and Alexander Farnese, his nephew, were frequent visitors, all being lively handsome youths except, indeed, poor fever-wasted Carlos, fretting his weak wits to frenzy in unrequited love and impotent spite.

In the summer of 1561 hopes were entertained that the Queen might fulfil her husband’s dearest wish and make him the father of another son, and the King’s delight at the prospect was unbounded. He caused to be made a solid silver sedan chair in which to carry his wife to Madrid, and overwhelmed her with attentions. But to Isabel’s grief the hope was fallacious, and Philip was tenderly solicitous to solace his wife’s disappointment. ‘Il avait toute la peine du monde de la consoler, et lui tenir beaucoup plus privée et plus ordinaire compagnie que n’avait jamais fait, de manière qu’il n’a été que bon que tous deux ayent eu cette opinion. Il me fit l’honneur de me prier que je l’allasse consoler, et lui dire qu’elle lui volust donner ce contentement et plaisir de ne s’en fachier, et mesme quand on seroit à Madrid, que ma femme le lui allast aussi dire, et user de tous ses bons offices qu’elle scavoit bien faire en son endroit. Elle est aujourd’hui, Madame, en tel estat pres du roy son mari que Votre Majesté, et tous ceux qui aiment son bien et sommes affectionnés à son service, en devront remercier Dieu.’^[186]

In the midst of this happy and harmonious life in Spain, the girl Queen tactfully did her best to obey her mother and serve the France she always held dear, but it was inevitable that as time went on and the influence of her husband over her grew, she should take a more purely Spanish view of affairs. The death of young Francis II., and the fall of the Guises, had made the friendship between Spain and France more difficult than ever, for the profound religious divisions in the latter country forbade any possibility of the national power being used, as had been contemplated in the Peace of Cateau Cambresis in the suppression of heresy everywhere; whilst Catharine’s now ostentatious friendship with the Bourbons and the reforming party, by which she hoped to counterbalance the Guises, deeply offended her son-in-law. Philip, however, at this time was in the depth of penury: his own Netherlands were simmering into revolt; he had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the Turk on the coast of Tunis (February 1560), and the Christian power in the Mediterranean was in the balance. Elizabeth of England, too, was more obstinate than ever in her adherence to the anti-Catholic policy, now that the strength of the Huguenot party in France banished the fear of a Catholic coalition of France and Spain against her. Much as Philip frowned at, and Isabel remonstrated against, Catharine’s proceedings, the King of Spain was not in a position to make war upon France, and for a time was obliged to dissemble with his mother-in-law. So far, therefore, the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis had been a failure, and Isabel had been sacrificed in vain. France and Spain could not make common cause against Protestantism, and Isabel could not win Don Carlos for her sister nor make her astute husband the tool of her mother’s plans, deeply as he loved his charming young wife.

With regard to the marriage of Carlos, Isabel was indefatigable in her efforts, but the prince grew more reckless than ever. In the spring of 1562 he was studying at the University of Alcalá, when, in descending a dark stairway to keep a secret assignation, he fell and fractured his skull. Philip and his wife were at Madrid when they received the news, and the King at once set out, travelling through the night full of anxiety for his son. He found him unconscious and partially paralysed: the doctors, ignorant beyond conception, treated him in a way that seems to us now nothing less than murderous. Purges, bleeding, unguents, charms, and, finally, the laying upon the bed of the unconscious lad the mouldering body of a monkish saint, Diego, were all tried in vain, until at last an Italian surgeon was bold enough to perform the operation of lifting the bone of the cranium that pressed upon the brain, and Don Carlos recovered his consciousness. But if he had been a semi-imbecile before, he became at intervals after this accident a raving homicidal maniac. The prince himself, and those who surrounded him, attributed his recovery to the mummy of the dead monk, and promised to give for religious purposes in recognition of the miracle four times his own weight in gold. When he was weighed for the purpose it was found that, although he was seventeen years old, he only weighed seventy pounds.

But, no matter how weak or vicious Carlos might be, the struggle to obtain his hand in marriage was waged as keenly as ever by Isabel and her mother on the one hand, and by the Austrian interest on the other, with the Princess Joan, the lad’s aunt, as a permanent candidate, to be used by Philip when he needed a diversion. Hardly had the grave anxiety about Carlos subsided when Isabel herself fell grievously ill, and was like to die. At the time that the physicians had abandoned hope of saving her (August 1562), Philip sent the Duke of Alba with a long message to the French ambassador, of which the latter wrote a copy to Catharine. He prefaces his letter by saying that the Queen was truly a bond of peace since she ‘possède le roi son mari, et est aujourd’hui en toute privauté et autorité avec lui.’ The message was to the effect that it had always been the rule when Spanish queens were ill, even slightly, to urge them to make their last dispositions in good time. On account, however, of the great love and extreme affection which he (Philip) bore to his wife, he had not allowed her in her present serious illness to be spoken to on the subject, so as not to distress or alarm her. For, as he said, he had in very truth good reason to love her dearly, and to take great care of her; and if this loss should befall him, he would have reason to say that it was the greatest and most important he had ever suffered in his life, and that which most nearly touched his heart, seeing the shining virtues and noble qualities with which his wife was endowed. He makes a great point of honouring and pleasing her, and preventing her from being troubled in any way; but since the physicians said that she had reached such an extremity that her life could no longer be expected to last,^[187] he would regret that his love for her, and his sorrow for her loss, should stand in the way of the duty she owed to her position and reputation to make a will.’ He assured the French ambassador that his friendship for his wife’s brother and mother would not be diminished by her death, and he proposed that she should leave two-thirds of her possessions to her mother, and the remainder be employed in pious uses and in rewarding her very numerous servants.^[188] This letter is of great interest in showing how truly Philip loved and respected his young wife, and every testimony shows that their affection continued to increase as the time went on, though all around them, both in public and private life, was full of bitterness and anxiety. Don Carlos grew more and more outrageous in his disregard of all decency and respect; and more than one miscarriage of Isabel seemed to threaten the King with the misfortune of a childless marriage.

But what was a source of greater trouble perhaps than anything to Isabel at this period, was the terrible infliction that was scourging her own country. The first war of religion in France had ended with the death of Guise and Anthony of Navarre, and the hollow edict of Amboise had been issued by Catharine, giving toleration to the Huguenots in certain towns. This was a heavy blow to Philip and his cause, and he tried to parry it in his characteristic fashion by the aid of the Guisan party. Jeanne d’Albret and her son (afterwards Henry IV.) had retired to mourn the death of Anthony in their castle of Pau. Henry was heir to the crown of France after Catharine’s sons, and his mother was a strict Calvinist, so the Catholic party planned, with Philip’s aid, to kidnap Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, and her hopeful son, to prevent the danger of a Huguenot ever being king of France. All was arranged for the coup de main when the principal conspirator, Captain Dimanche, fell ill in a poor hostelry in Madrid. Isabel had always been accustomed to keep herself well-informed of all cases of trouble amongst her own countrymen in Spain, and hearing from her servants that a Frenchman was alone and suffering, had him brought from his squalid lodging to the house of one of her servants, to be well cared for by one of her own doctors. Dimanche, in the course of his illness, divulged his conspiracy to his host, who, though a Catholic, was shocked at the wickedness of the plan, and told it to a higher officer, and afterwards to Isabel, who, he knew, was deeply attached to Jeanne d’Albret. The Queen listened to the story with horror, and cried, with tears in her eyes, ‘God forbid that such a crime should be committed.’ As fast as a confidential courier could gallop went the news from Isabel to her mother; how the Catholic party and Spain were plotting to ruin the house of Navarre, and overthrow the equilibrium in France; and Jeanne d’Albret and her son, also warned by Isabel, escaped from Pau into central France.

Philip probably never knew that it was his wife who had upset so promising a plan; but that her intervention was not from any love of Protestantism is clearly seen by her subsequent action. Her Catholicism, indeed, was more Spanish than French in its character; and that her politic mother should call to her councils at all those whose orthodoxy was doubtful, appeared to her nothing short of abominable, though for a short time after the first Huguenot war, Catharine had managed to bring about an appearance of harmony between the two great French factions. But Condé, the chief of the Bourbons, after Anthony’s death, was rough and imperious, and personally disliked by Catharine: Cardinal Lorraine returned to France from the Council of Trent early in 1564, thirsting to revenge the murder of his brother Guise, and soon Catholic intrigue was busy in the French Court.

Isabel wrote to her mother an extraordinary letter at this time (the summer of 1564), evidently inspired by Philip, and forming a part of the Lorraine intrigues to win Catherine to the ultra-catholic party. ‘If,’ wrote Isabel, ‘you will cause Frenchmen to live as good catholics, there is nothing you can ask of my husband that he will not give you. He begs you will not compromise with the evil people, but punish them very severely. If you are afraid because of their great number ... you may call upon us, and we will give you everything we possess, and troops as well, to support religion. If you do not punish these men yourself, you must not be offended if the King, my husband, listens to the demands of those who crave his help to defend the faith, and gives them what they ask. He is, indeed, obliged to do so, for it touches him more than any one. If France becomes Lutheran, Flanders and Spain will not be far behind.’^[189] And so, for page after page of her long letter, Isabel urges her mother to crush the Huguenots for once and for all. Catharine loved intrigue and crooked ways; and, although it was no part of her plan to have only one party in France, she feared the Guises less now that the Duke was dead, and it doubtless seemed to her a good opportunity for drawing closer to Spain, in order to effect the marriage of her daughter Margaret with Don Carlos, and gain some advantage by marriage or otherwise for her darling son Henry (Duke of Orleans).

The effect of Cardinal Lorraine’s action was soon seen in the long progress through the east and south of France undertaken by Charles IX. and his mother. Catharine had been trying, ever since the death of Francis II., to arrange an interview with Philip, and bring her personal influence to bear upon him, though he had shown no eagerness to discuss the matter; but now that the Court of France, with Lorraine pulling the wires, was to visit the south, there seemed a chance of effecting at last what the treaty of Cateau Cambresis had failed to do. The Court left Paris in the spring of 1564, and at Nancy, the scheme of Lorraine for a Catholic league to suppress heresy was first broached to Charles IX. He was a mere lad, and was apparently alarmed at the idea; but in the meanwhile, active negotiations were going on to induce Philip and his wife to meet Catharine when she approached the frontier with her son. The French ambassador in Spain was a strong Guisan partisan, and worked hard to bring about the interview, as did Isabel herself, who was sincerely attached to her kinsfolk, and yearned to embrace her mother again. Philip was anxious to forward the formation of a Catholic League, but he distrusted Catharine, and after much negotiation, he consented to Isabel’s going as far as Bayonne to greet her mother; the political negotiation, however, being entirely left to the Duke of Alba.

Philip was not enthusiastic, for he knew that Catharine was surrounded by ‘politicians,’ and he was determined that if nothing came of the interview, it should not be said that he had been deceived. He would not, he said, go to any expense on the occasion, and no gold or silver was to be worn on the dresses on either side: and the Queen was to be kept to the most rigid etiquette in her communications with her mother and brother. She left Madrid with a great train of courtiers in April 1565, bearing with her powers from her husband to ratify the arrangements that Alba might make. What these arrangements were may be seen by the memorandum given by Philip to Alba for his guidance.^[190] The object aimed at was a league, in which each party should be pledged to employ all his force and means to sustain Catholic orthodoxy, to allow no toleration whatever to any other religion, in public or private, and to expel all persons but catholics from the realms, within five months, on pain of death, and forfeiture for them and their abettors, to publish and enforce the decisions of the Council of Trent, to purge all the offices, commands, and services, of every suspicion of heresy, and to deprive of their dignities, titles, and authority, every person not firmly attached to the faith.

With this fateful mission Isabel travelled slowly towards the north, through Burgos, in the spring of 1565. She had in her train more than sixty Spanish nobles with their gaudily garbed followers; and, though Philip’s orders with regard to bullion ornaments had been obeyed, there was no lack of costly show. On the 14th May, in a heat so suffocating that many of the soldiers died, Catharine and her son with the French Court rode at early morning out of Saint Jean de Luz, to reach the little river Bidasoa which divides France from Spain. For two hours the royal party rested under a green arbour on the banks, whilst the Spanish baggage was being ferried across; and just as the burning sun was beginning to decline, a burst of trumpets heralded the approach of the Queen of Spain. From the ancient castle of Irun the royal procession could be seen winding down the hill to the shore, Isabel being borne in a litter. Catharine at once entered her waiting boat, and swift oars brought her to the Spanish side just as her daughter’s litter reached the edge. Both Queens were beside themselves with joy. Isabel bent low enough to kiss her mother’s knee, but was raised and tenderly embraced, again and again, and then, overcome by their emotions, both Catharine and Isabel burst into tears of joyful excitement, which continued unabated until the boat had landed them on the French bank, where Charles IX. awaited them amidst saluting volleys of musketry.^[191]

The pompous rejoicings, the tourneys, comedies, balls, and banquets, which followed at St. Jean de Luz and Bayonne; the splendour with which each Court tried to dazzle the other, and the grave political conferences between Alba and the French ministers and Catharine, cannot be dwelt upon here; but the picture drawn of Isabel herself in the midst of this memorable interview by Brantôme, who was present, is too interesting to omit. ‘When she entered Bayonne she rode upon a pony very superbly and richly harnessed with a cloth completely covered with pearls embroidered, which had belonged to the Empress, and was used by her when she entered towns in state; it was said to be worth one hundred thousand crowns and more. She was quite bewitching on horseback, and was worth gazing upon; for she was so lovely and sweet that every one was enchanted. We were all ordered to go and meet her and accompany her on her entrance ... and she was most gracious to us when we paid our respects to her, and thanked us charmingly. To me, especially, she was kind and cordial; for I had only taken leave of her in Spain four months before, and I was greatly touched that she should thus favour me over my fellows.... She was also familiar to the ladies and maids at the Court, exactly the same as before her marriage, and took notice of those who were absent or had got married; and about those who had come to Court since she left she made many inquiries.’

In the discussions with the political ministers it was soon evident to Catharine, as she had probably foreseen from the first, that to throw herself entirely into the hands of the extreme Catholic party as Philip desired, would be disastrous to her, and probably also to her son’s throne. But it did not suit her to quarrel with her powerful son-in-law, or to send her daughter back empty-handed to Madrid, after the much heralded interview; so, although an arrangement was signed which ostensibly bound France and Spain together for a religious end, Catharine took care to leave a sufficient number of knotty points open to give her a loophole to escape. When she returned to Paris she soon began to raise difficulties about the ratification, and wrote to her ambassador in Madrid (Fourquevault), ‘Je lui dis que en faisant ces mariages, et donnant quelque état à mon fils d’Orleans, qu’il nous falloit tous joindre ensemble: c’est à savoir le Pape, l’Empereur, et ces deux rois, les Allemands et autres que l’on avisera: et que le roi mon fils n’etait pas sans moyens pour aider de sa part, à ce qui serait avisé quand les dits mariages seroient faits, et la dite ligue conclüe.’ It will be seen that she makes here so many conditions as to render the league quite impossible. Not only is her daughter Margaret to marry Carlos, and her son Henry a daughter of the Emperor with an independent State, but all the other Catholic powers are to join the league before France is to be bound to anything.

Indeed, it is clear that the power of the Huguenot and ‘politician’ nobles in France, and the old jealousy between France and Spain, together with the persecution by the Inquisition of French residents and visitors in Spain, and the massacre in the following year of the French expedition to Florida by Philip’s orders, made a sincere co-operation between the two countries in such a league impracticable;^[192] and though appearances were saved at Bayonne, Philip, when he joyfully met his wife after her nineteen days’ absence from him, must have known that again his dream of a Catholic league had failed. ‘Je ne fis qu’arriver hier (writes the French ambassador to Catharine on Isabel’s return) de baiser la main de la reine, la quelle j’ai trouvée si joieuse et contente de la bonne venue du roy son mari, et de la démonstration de la bonne affection et amitié qu’il lui fait.’ Though the personal affection between the husband and wife was without a cloud, it was certain that the political results of the marriage were insignificant. Isabel fought hard for some satisfaction to the outrage to France in Florida, but without result; Coligny, to her and Philip’s indignation, was growing powerful in the French government; and the second war of religion was seen to be inevitable, whilst the issue was already joined between Philip and his Dutch subjects; pledged, as they were, to stand together to resist him to the death.

In the midst of these public causes for anxiety Philip was overjoyed to learn that his wife, whose age was nearly twenty-one, was likely to become a mother.^[193] The King, as usual, arranged every small detail himself of, ‘le régime dont elle devoit user pour conduire son fruit à bon port’; and his demonstrations of affection and pride for his wife, and rejoicing at his hopes for a time, even in public, overcame his natural frigid dignity. Nor was Catharine less delighted, for to her, should the child prove a son, the event was of the highest importance, in view of the growing incapacity of Don Carlos; and she also sent by M. de Saint Etienne a parcel to her daughter: ‘Où il y a tout plein de recettes, dont elle peut avoir de besoin’; and she wrote personally to the physician in attendance, urging him to make use of these recipes, which she assured him would do Isabel good.

Every day the smallest incident of the Queen’s condition were recounted by courier to her mother; and Philip could hardly tear himself from her side whilst he disposed of his usually beloved business. At length, on the 1st August 1566, a daughter was born, at Balsain, near Segovia, to Philip and Isabel. The child was christened Isabel, after the great Queen and her mother, Clara because she was born on the day of the Saint, and Eugénie, out of gratitude to the efficacious body of St. Eugène—and the sumptuous ceremony of baptism was not allowed to pass without a jealous wrangle between the Archbishop of Santiago and the Bishop of Segovia, as to which should have the honour of performing the rite, which was eventually celebrated by the Nuncio Castaneo, afterwards Pope Urban VII. It would doubtless have been more satisfactory to Philip had a son been born; but his joy and gratitude were nevertheless intense, and the French ambassador, writing to Catharine a few days afterwards, says that when he went to congratulate him, he had him (the ambassador) led to the Queen’s room: ‘Voulant que je visse la fille qu’il avoit plu Dieu lui donner, de laquelle il est tant aise qu’il ne peut le dissimuler, et l’aime, à ce qu’il dit, pour le présent mieux qu’un fils.’ This deep affection for his elder daughter lasted to the King’s dying day; and the famous Infanta, designated by him to be in succession Queen of England and France, became by his will sovereign of the Netherlands, and inherited from her father not only the ancient domains of his paternal house but his views, his methods, and his obstinacy.

The Queen lay apparently at the point of death for some days after her delivery, but as soon as her life was safe, the great project, so long discussed, of a voyage of the royal family to insurgent Flanders, was again taken in hand. Philip was for going alone, leaving, it was hoped by Catharine, his wife Regent, though Isabel herself begged hard that she might be allowed to accompany her husband: ‘Car vraiment, je serois trop marrie de demeurer par deçà après lui; je ferai ce qui sera en moi qu’il ne m’y laisse point.’ There was another who desired as ardently as she to go to Flanders with the King. This was his only son Don Carlos. The young man’s frantic excesses had grown more scandalous than ever as he became older. The struggle to obtain his hand in marriage was still going on between the Austrian and French interests; but Philip continued to put the matter gently aside on the ground of his son’s ill-health.

The afflicted father had done his best to wean the Prince from his violence and dissoluteness. He himself had been a dutiful son, ready to sacrifice everything for the task confided to him, and his grief was profound that this son of his youth should openly scandalise his court by his disobedience and insolence to his father and sovereign. Like his great-grandmother, Joan the Mad, the Prince lived in constant revolt against authority, sacred and mundane. His conduct in the Council of State, where his father had placed him to accustom him to business, had shocked every one. Apparently out of sheer wrong-headedness he had openly expressed his sympathy with the Netherlanders, who were defying the will of his father, and he had extorted a semi-promise that he should accompany the King to Flanders. Whether the Prince had entered into any communication with the agents of the Flemings is doubtful; but even if such were the case, and the ambition of Carlos to obtain an early regency of Flanders was the end he had in view, it is a mere travesty of history to represent that he seriously held reformed opinions, any more than did Joan the Mad, when she reviled the mass and the sacred symbols.

In any case, Philip abandoned his intention, if he ever really held it, of going in person to the Low Countries; and decided to send the ruthless Alba with a great army to scourge the stubborn ‘beggars’ into humble submission to his will. When Carlos heard this, and that he, too, was to remain in Spain, his fury passed all bounds. He attempted to stab Alba himself when he went to take leave; and when the Cortes of Castile petitioned the King that the heir to the throne should be kept in Spain, Carlos made an open scandal, and threatened the deputies with death.

By this time, the autumn of 1567, Isabel was again pregnant, and Philip’s hopes ran high that another son would be born to him. It is clear that the great mission to which he and his father had devoted strenuous lives could not safely be passed on to Carlos; and in September, Ruy Gomez, Philip’s only friend, told the French ambassador that if the Queen gave birth to a son, the future of Carlos as heir would have to be reconsidered. The Prince was insatiable for money, which he scattered broadcast on evil doings, he was openly insolent to his father, and the latter suspected a design to escape clandestinely to join the enemies of his State: and there is no doubt that if Isabel’s second child had been a son, he would have been placed in the succession before Don Carlos. Philip exceeded himself in tender solicitude for his wife, but at last, on the 17th October 1567, the child that all Europe was breathlessly expecting, was born—another daughter.

Thereafter the romance of Don Carlos unfolded rapidly. Philip had been patient and longsuffering under the affliction of such a son, but he at length despaired, and his attachment to his heir gave place to antipathy and disgust: especially when his physicians had definitely assured him that his line could never be continued by Carlos.^[194] The Prince, on the other hand, hated his father bitterly, and was morose with his aunt Joan, whom he formerly loved, and with the young Austrian Princes, though he had now been formally betrothed to their sister Anna. The only person who influenced him was Isabel: ‘Il fait semblant de trouver bon tout ce que la reyne votre fille fait et dit, et n’y a personne qui dispose de lui comme elle, et c’est sans artifice ni feinte, car il ne sçait feindre ni dissimuler.’^[195]

Matters came to a head at the end of the year 1567. Philip and Isabel had gone to pass Christmas at the newly commenced Palace of the Escorial, when Carlos decided to make his long contemplated attempt to escape from Spain. On the 23rd December, he whispered to his young uncle, Don Juan of Austria, that he needed his help to get horses; and Juan, recognising the seriousness of the situation, at once rode the thirty odd miles to the Escorial to tell the King. As in all his great calamities, Philip remained outwardly unmoved, and though he took such measures secretly as would frustrate the flight, he did not return to Madrid until the day previously fixed, the 17th January 1568. The next day he went with Carlos to mass; but still made no sign. In the interim, the Prince had even attempted to kill Don Juan; and it was time for his father to strike, in order to prevent some greater tragedy, for Carlos had admitted to his confessor that he had an ungovernable impulse to kill a man. Whom? asked the confessor. The King, was the reply. For once Philip broke down utterly when, with Ruy Gomez and other intimate councillors, he deliberated what should be done. Late that night, when the Prince slept, the afflicted father, with five armed gentlemen and twelve guards, obtained entrance into the chamber, in spite of secret bolts and locks; and when the Prince, disturbed, sprang up and sought for his weapons, the weapons were gone. In rage and despair, he tried to strangle himself, but was restrained; and, recognising that he was a helpless prisoner, he flung himself upon his bed in an agony of grief, and sobbed out, ‘I am not mad, not mad, only desperate.’

From that hour he was dead to the world, which saw him no more. The position was a humiliating one for Philip, but he made the best of it, by explaining to all the courts that the prince’s mental deficiency necessitated his seclusion. To his own nearest relatives he did not hide his bitterness. ‘It is not a punishment,’ he wrote, ‘would to God it were, for it might come to an end: but I never can hope to see my son restored to his right mind again. I have chosen in this matter to sacrifice to God my own flesh and blood, preferring His service and the universal good to all human considerations.’ Some sort of trial or examination of the prince was held, but all professed accounts of the proceedings must be accepted with caution. Certain it is that they dragged on wearily, whilst the charges of treason, of conspiracy, of disloyalty, and perhaps of heresy, were laboriously examined in strict secrecy. Neither Isabel nor his aunt Joan was allowed to see Carlos, and Don Juan was forbidden even to wear mourning for the calamity. By all accounts the prince’s malady grew rapidly worse, as well it might in such circumstances. Like Joan the Mad before him, he would starve for days, and then swallow inedible things, he would alternately roast and freeze himself, and he attempted suicide more than once. The end came on the 25th July 1568, and the immense weight of testimony is in favour of his having died in consequence of his own mad fancies in diet and hygiene.

When Fourquevault conveyed the news of Carlos’s death to Catharine, he wrote that the Queen Isabel was suffering from fainting fits and headache; but it was her wish that great signs of mourning should be made for the Prince in France, to show the King of Spain that they (i.e., the French) were sorry for his loss; ‘as the Spanish people attach so much importance to appearances.’ Isabel in weak health, for she was again pregnant, was deeply touched by the trouble around her. The French ambassador was gleefully reminding her mother that the death of Don Carlos was a very good thing for her, and praising her beauty, which the deep Spanish mourning set off to advantage, whilst he indulged in brilliant hopes for the birth of a son to Isabel. But the young Queen’s heart was heavy, not for Carlos alone, but for the scenes of horror which were flooding Flanders with blood under the flail of Alba. Egmont and Horn had been treacherously sacrificed in Brussels, Montigny in Spain, and her own dear France was reft in twain by fratricidal war. She was a catholic as sincere as Philip himself, but that the faith should need wholesale murder for its assertion shocked and frightened her; and she languished in the atmosphere of gloomy determination which surrounded Philip.

Catharine wrote often in reply to the depressing news from her daughter, arousing her hopes for a son who should, in his time, put all things right; but Isabel at twenty-three had lost her gay elasticity, and the advance of her pregnancy meant the advance of her exhausting malady. Philip, as usual, was tenderly solicitous for her ease and happiness; full of hope, too, that a son at last was to be born to him, for upon this everything depended. The lying stories which long afterwards the traitor Antonio Perez wove with hellish skill in the safe refuge of Essex House, accusing Philip of jealousy of his wife with Don Carlos, and subsequently with one Pozzo, are hardly worth more credit now than the sentimental romance of the Abbé de St. Real about her love for Carlos. Perez, whose only wish was to blacken Philip indelibly to please his enemies, and his own paymasters in England and France, hints that Philip himself connived at his beloved wife’s murder by poison: but even if the confidential letters of her French friends now before us did not disprove this, the fact that nothing could be so unfortunate for Philip’s policy as Isabel’s death would give it the lie.

Isabel had been suffering for months from heart failure and bodily irregularities; and on the 3rd October 1568, the violent remedies administered to her by her doctors caused a miscarriage. The poor Queen knew that she was doomed, for when before daybreak Philip, heartbroken, came and sat by her bed, she calmly took a last farewell of him, praying him to be good to their two little girls, to be friendly with Catharine and King Charles IX., and kind to the attendant ladies who had served her so well: ‘with other words worthy of admiration, and fit to break the heart of a good husband, such as the King was. He answered her in the same way; for he could not believe that she was so near her end, and promised all she asked him; after which he retired to his room in great anguish, as I am told.’^[196] The dying woman had confessed and received extreme unction during the night; and early in the morning the French ambassadors were summoned to her chamber. ‘She knew us at once, and said, Ah! ambassador, you see me well on the road out of this unhappy world into a better one ... pray my mother and brother to bear my loss patiently, and to be satisfied with what pleases me more than any prosperity I have enjoyed in this world, to go to my Creator, where I may serve him better than I can here. I shall pray Him that all my brothers and sisters may live long and happily, as well as my mother and brother Charles: and I beg you to beseech them to look to their realm, and prevent heresy taking root. Let them all take my death patiently, for I am very happy.’ ‘O!’ replied the principal ambassador, ‘your Majesty will live a long time yet, to see France good and happy.’ ‘No, no, ambassador,’ she whispered, shaking her head with a faint smile. ‘I do hope it will be so, but I do not wish to see it. I would much rather go and see what I hope very soon to see.’

After much more tender talk of her own land and people, the dying Queen took farewell of her countrymen and prayed awhile with her ghostly comforters: then fell into slumber for a short ten minutes. At midday, ‘she suddenly opened her eyes, bright and sparkling, and it seemed to me as if she wished to tell me something more, for they looked straight at me:^[197] and then Isabel of the Peace passed quietly into the world her gentle soul longed for. ‘We left the palace all in tears, for throughout the people of this city there is not one, great or small, that doth not weep; for they all mourn in her the best Queen they have ever had.’ Philip in grief hid himself from the world in the monastery of Saint Jerome; but his task in the world was greater to him even than his sorrow or his love. The hopes of the French alliance to extirpate heresy had failed, failed utterly and completely. England, helping the insurgent Flemings with all her might, had drifted further, and ever further, away from him. In France the reformation was growing, and only two lives—and bad ones—stood between the throne and a Huguenot King. There was no male heir to inherit the thorny inheritance of championing orthodox Christianity throughout the world. Whither could Philip turn for sympathy and a mother for the heir he yearned for? Not to England; not to France, for both had failed him. Where but to his own kin in Austria; to his niece Anna, the betrothed of his dead son Carlos: and on the second anniversary of Isabel’s death Anna of Austria landed in Spain to marry her uncle Philip. Isabel of the Peace politically had lived in vain.