homage and kisses his hand, followed by each noble in his turn, advancing towards the blushing prince, who had been with difficulty prevailed on to act this part during the life of his brother.
The new king then mounts on a milk-white charger, covered with gold trappings, nets, feathers, and ribbons, and attended by all the confederates (or conspirators, as they might be called), and the vast multitude, passes up the hill to Avila, amid universal acclamations, to the Cathedral, where the apse forms a strong bastion in the city wall. And here he is blessed under the gloom of deeply stained windows, while bishops pronounce warlike orations in his honour to the boom of cannon and the firing of arquebuses.
But an unforeseen misfortune befell the confederate nobles. The young Alfonso died. Nothing daunted, however, they at once named his sister, the Infanta Isabel, Princess of the Asturias, heiress to the crown.
CHAPTER XXIII
Ferdinand and Isabel
