Her maids of honor saw that she was ill, and hastened to assist her. The hour of the princess's toilet was to her attendants the most delightful hour of the day. From her bedchamber all ceremonial was banished; and there, with her young companions, Isabella was accustomed to laugh, jest, sing, and be as merry and as free from care as the least of her father's subjects.
Philip of Parma was by birth a Spaniard, one of the sons of Philip the Fifth. After the vicissitudes of war which wrested Naples and Parma from the hands of Austria, Don Carlos of Spain became king of Naples, and Don Philip, duke of Parma. Isabella, then a child of seven years, had been allowed the privilege of taking with her to Italy her young playmates, who, for form's sake, as she grew older, became her maids of honor. But they were her dear and chosen friends, and with them she was accustomed to speak the Spanish language only.
Her mother, daughter of Louis XV., had introduced French customs into the court of Parma, and during her life the gayety and grace of French manners had rendered that court one of the most attractive in Europe. But the lovely Duchess of Parma died, and with her died all that made court life endurable. The French language was forbidden, and French customs were banished. Some said that the duke had loved his wife so deeply, that in his grief he had excluded from his court every thing suggestive of his past happiness. Others contended that he had made her life so wretched by his jealous and tyrannical conduct, that remorse had driven him to banish, if possible, every reminder of the woman whom he had almost murdered.
In the hearts of her children the mother's memory was enshrined; and the brother and sister were accustomed for her sake, in their private intercourse, to speak HER language altogether.
At court they spoke the language of the country; and Isabella—who with her friends sang boleros and danced the cachuca; with her brother, read Racine and Corneille—was equally happy while she hung enraptured upon the strains of Pergolese's music, or gazed entranced upon the pictures of Correggio and the Veronese. The princess herself was both a painter and musician, and no one, more than she, loved Italy and Italian art.
Such, until this wretched morning, had been the life of young Isabella. What was she now? A cold, white image, in whose staring eyes the light was quenched—from whose blanched lips the smile had fled forever!
Her grieved attendants could scarcely suppress their tears, as sadly and silently they arrayed her in her rich robes; while she, not seeming to know where she was, gazed at her own reflected image with a look of stupid horror. They dressed her beautiful hair, and bound it up in massy braids. They smoothed it over her death-cold forehead, and shuddered to see how like a corpse she looked. At last the task was at an end, and the cameriera coming toward her, offered the cup of chocolate which she was accustomed to drink at that hour. Tenderly she besought the unhappy girl to partake of it, but Isabella waved away the cup, saying:
"Dear friend, offer me no earthly food. I pine for the banquet of angels. Let the chaplain be called to bring the viaticum. I wish to receive the last sacraments of the dying."
A cry of horror burst from the lips of the maids of honor.
"The chaplain! The last sacraments! For you, my beloved child?" asked the sobbing cameriera.