“Then I want to be God.”
Juan made the sign of the cross on himself, filled with shame and horror at hearing his wife give utterance to such a thing, whose head was undoubtedly turned by the demon of ambition. But he did not wish to exasperate the poor crazed being with lessons which, had she been in her right senses, she would have deserved.
“But don't you know, child,” he said to her with sweetness, “that the fulfilment of that desire is as impossible as it is foolish? The emperor has granted us whatever we have asked, but what you want now he cannot grant.”
“Still, I want you to go and see him, and say so to him; for perhaps between him and the Pope they will be able to manage it.”
“But if there is and never can be more than one God, how can you be made God?”
“I have always heard say that God can do everything. If the emperor consults with the Pope, and the Pope has recourse to God, then you'll see if God, who can do everything, will disappoint them both.”
“But if God cannot?”
“Hold your tongue, Jew, and don't say such awful things. God can do everything.”
Juan thought it would be more prudent to abstain from contradicting his wife any further. So he retired and summoned the chief physician of the court, in order to lay before him the new and extraordinary phase which the moral malady of the queen displayed. The physician said that in his long professional career he had met with cases of mental aberration even more extraordinary than that of the queen; and insisted that, far from contradicting the august invalid, they should comply with her every wish as far as it was humanly possible.
The king returned soon after to the chamber of his august spouse, who the moment she saw him became a perfect wasp.