ISABEL OF VALOIS.
After a painting by Pantoja.
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.