Que, siendo amor mi guia,
Al cielo de España voy,
Por ver mi estrella Maria.”
“Charles Stuart here am I
Guided by love afar,
Into the Spanish sky
To see Maria my star.”
‘There are comedians once a week come to the palace, where, under a great canopy, the Queen and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Princeps and Don Carlos on the Queen’s right hand, the King and the little Cardinal (i.e. the King’s boy-brother, Ferdinand) on the Infanta’s left hand.’
Philip’s notorious and scandalous infidelity to his wife, to whom, nevertheless, he was devotedly attached, did not prevent him from being violently jealous of any appearance of special loving homage to her beauty and charm. At one of the great cane tourneys to celebrate his accession in the summer of 1621, it was noticed that when Juan de Tassis, Count of Villamediana, rode with his troop of horsemen into the arena, he was wearing a sash covered with the silver coins called reales (royals), and flaunting as his motto, ‘My loves are reals’ (or royal). The Count was a spiteful poetaster, neither good looking nor young, but boastful and presumptuous; and the quidnuncs of the capital who flocked ‘Liar’s parade,’[[209]] began to whisper that this was a challenge to the love of the Queen; and that the King, when his wife had remarked that Villamediana aimed well, had replied, ‘Yes, but he aims too high.’ It is now fairly certain that Villamediana’s homage was not intended for the Queen, but for another lady, named Francisca de Tavara, with whom the King was carrying on an intrigue at the time;[[210]] and beyond her usual jovial heartiness there is no ground for supposing that Isabel gave Villamediana any encouragement.
But in the following spring of 1622, when the Court was at Aranjuez, a far more serious matter happened which produced tragic results for Villamediana. There was a great festival to celebrate Philip’s seventeenth birthday, and one of the attractions was a temporary theatre of canvas and wood erected in the ‘island garden,’ and beautifully adorned, in which was to be represented at night a comedy in verse written by the Count of Villamediana, and dedicated to the Queen. The comedy was called ‘La Gloria de Niquea,’ and Isabel was to represent the part of the goddess of beauty. All the Court was assembled, the King being in his seat with his brothers and sister, and the Queen in the retiring rooms behind the stage. The inside of the flimsy building was of course lit brilliantly with wax candles and lamps, whilst in the densely wooded gardens outside all was dark, when suddenly, at the moment that the prologue had been finished, a cry went up from behind the curtain: and then a long tongue of flame licked up the side, and immediately the whole of the stage was aflame. Panic seized upon the gaily bedizened crowd, and there was a rush to escape. In the confusion the King with difficulty found his way out, only to rush to the back of the edifice in search of his wife. Villamediana had been before him, and Philip found his wife half fainting in the Count’s arms.