[280]. They are described with the minuteness of a milliner’s bill in ‘Descripcion de las circunstancias esenciales ... en la funcion de los desposorios del Rey N. S. Don Carlos II.’ Madrid, 1679.
[281]. Mme. D’Aulnoy’s celebrated ‘Voyage D’Espagne’ is usually quoted largely for local colour in the histories and romances of this period. I am, however, of opinion that very little credit can be given to it, so far as the authoress’s own adventures are concerned. I have grave doubts indeed, whether Mme. D’Aulnoy went to Spain at all. Much of her information is easily traceable to other books, and the rest, apart from the love romances that occupy so many of her pages, may well have been gathered from her cousin, who was married to a Spanish nobleman. The cousin is represented as a friend of Don Juan, and the conversation very likely did take place with her, as Mme. D’Aulnoy represents, though perhaps the latter was not present.
[282]. ‘Voyage d’Espagne.’ La Haye, 1692.
[283]. When he consented to the return of some of Mariana’s friends to Court he was told that Don Juan would object. ‘What does that matter?’ he replied. ‘I wish it, and that is enough.’
[284]. ‘Recueil des Instructions aux Ambassadeurs de France (Espagne).’ Paris, 1894.
[285]. The leather or damask curtains of the coaches were usually kept closed except by confessedly immodest women; but on such occasions as these, they were sometimes opened to satisfy the crowd, who wished to welcome royal persons.
[286]. ‘Descripcion de las circunstancias,’ etc. Madrid, 1679.
[287]. Ibid.
[288]. ‘Semanario Erudito,’ vol. ii., where a pamphlet of the period is reproduced accusing her of complicity in the murder of her cousin, Don Diego de Aragon.
[289]. The lively Mme. D’Aulnoy gives a description of a scene previous to the departure of the young Queen’s household from Madrid. The ladies had been privately mustered in the Retiro Gardens for the King to see how they would look mounted when they entered the capital in state with the Queen. ‘The young ladies of the palace were quite pretty, but, good God! what figures the Duchess of Terranova and Doña Maria de Aragon cut. They were both mounted on mules, all bristling and clanking with silver, and with a great saddle cloth of black velvet, like those used by physicians on their horses in Paris. They were both dressed in widows’ weeds, which I have already described to you, both very ugly and very old, with an air of severity and imperiousness, and they wore great hats tied on by strings under their chins. There were twenty gentlemen around them holding them up, for fear they should fall, though they would never have allowed one to touch them thus unless they had been in fear of breaking their necks.—‘Voyage d’Espagne.’ The same authority says that the Duchess of Terranova alone took with her on the journey, ‘six litters of different coloured embroidered velvet, and forty mules caparisoned as richly as ever I have seen.’