In his youth a man of as many marriages, secret and open, as Henry VIII. himself, he had been compelled to imprison and perhaps to suppress his son Don Carlos. The English ambassadors found him a man of domestic virtues. Yet the sole daughter who cherished him he sacrificed in a moment to his dynastic projects. And the other? Well, there is something to be said concerning that other.
Philip II. dwelt in the Escorial as in a fenced city. But Valentine la Niña had a master-key to unlock all doors. The next morning very early—for the King rose and donned his monk's robe in the twilight, stealing to his place in the stalls like any of his Jeronomite fellows—the two found their way along the vast corridors to the tiny royal chambers, bare of comfort as monastic cells, but loaded with petitions, reports, and letters from the four corners of the earth.
"Tell the King that Valentine la Niña, Countess of Astorga, would see him!"
And at that word the royal confessor, who had come to interview them, grew suddenly ashen pale in the scant light of a covered morning, as if the granite of the court in which they stood had been reflected in his face.
He made a low reverence and withdrew without a word.
At last the two girls were at the door of the King's chamber—a closet rather than a room. Philip was seated at his desk, his gouty foot on the eternal leg-rest, a ghastly picture of St. Lawrence over his head, and a great crucifix in ivory and silver nailed upon the wall, just where the King's eyes would rest upon it each time he lifted his head.
Claire took in the outward appearance of the mighty monarch who had been but a name to her up to this moment. He looked not at all like the "Demon of the South" of her imagination.
A little fair man, in appearance all a Flamand of the very race he despised, a Flamand of the Flamands His blue eyes were already rheumy and filmed with age, and when he wished to see anything very clearly he had a trick of covering the right eye with his hand, thrusting his head forward, and peering short-sightedly with the other. His hair, though white, retained some of the saffron bloom which once had marked him in a crowd as the white panache served the Bearnais. His beard, dirty white also, was straggling and tufted, as if in secret hours of sorrow it had been plucked out, Oriental fashion, by the roots.
"My father," said Valentine la Niña, looking at him straight and fearlessly, "I have come to bid you a good morning. My uncle of Astorga would have come too, but he prays in his canon's stall in the cathedral of Leon for his near and dear 'parent,' your Majesty."
The King rose slowly from his chair. His glabrous face showed no emotion.