The ambassador said a few words of comfort, endeavoring to give her, if possible, some hopes of life. But she answered, "You will soon know how near I am to my end. God has given me grace to despise the world and its grandeur, and to fix all my hopes on him and Jesus Christ. Never did a thought occasion me less anxiety than that of death."
HER OBSEQUIES.
"She then listened to the exhortations of her confessor, remaining in full possession of her consciousness, till a few minutes before her death. A slight restlessness seemed to come over her, which soon subsided, and she expired[{497}] so tranquilly that it was impossible to fix the moment when she gave up the ghost. Yet she opened her eyes once, bright and glancing, and it seemed as if she would address me some further commands,—at least, her looks were fixed on me."[1565]
Not long before Isabella's death, she was delivered of a daughter. Its birth was premature, and it lived only to be baptized. The infant was laid in the same coffin with its mother; and, that very evening, their remains were borne in solemn procession to the royal chapel.[1566] The tolling of the bells in the churches and monasteries throughout the city announced the sad tidings to the people, who filled the air with their cries, making everywhere the most passionate demonstrations of grief;[1567] for the queen, says Brantôme, "was regarded by them not merely with feelings of reverence, but of idolatry."[1568]
In the chapel were gathered together whatever was illustrious in the capital,—the high ecclesiastics, and the different religious bodies, the grandees and cavaliers of the court, and the queen's ladies of honor. At the head of these stood the duchess of Alva, the mistress of the robes, with the duchess of Feria—an English lady, married to the Spanish ambassador at the court of Mary Tudor—and the princess of Eboli, a name noted in history. The coffin of the deceased queen, covered with its gorgeous pall of brocade, was placed on a scaffold shrouded in black, and surrounded with numerous silver sconces bearing wax tapers, that shed a gloomy lustre over the scene.[1569] The services were performed amidst the deepest stillness of the audience, unless when broken by the wailings of the women, which mingled in sad harmony with the chant of the priests and the sweet and solemn music that accompanied the office for the dead.[1570]
Early on the following morning the coffin was opened in presence of the duchess of Alva and the weeping ladies of her train, who gazed for the last time on features still beautiful in death.[1571] The duchess then filled the coffin[{498}] with flowers and sweet-scented herbs; and the remains of mother and child were transported by the same sorrowing company to the convent of the barefooted Carmelites. Here they reposed till the year 1573, when they were borne, with the remains of Carlos, to the stately mausoleum of the Escorial; and the populace, as they gazed on the funeral train, invoked the name of Isabella as that of a saint.[1572]
In the course of the winter, Cardinal Guise arrived from France with letters of condolence from Charles the Ninth to his royal brother-in-law. The instructions to the cardinal do not infer any distrust, on the part of the French monarch, as to the manner of his sister's death. The more suspicious temper of the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, is seen in her directions to Fourquevaulx to find out what was said on the subject of her daughter's death, and to report it to her.[1573]—It does not seem that the ambassador gathered any information of consequence, to add to his former details.
Philip himself may have had in his mind the possible existence of such suspicions, when he told the cardinal that "his best consolation for his loss was derived from his reflection on the simple and excellent life of the queen. All her attendants, her ladies and maids, knew how well he had treated her, as was sufficiently proved by the extraordinary sorrow which he felt at her death. Hereupon," continues the cardinal, "he broke forth into a panegyric on her virtues, and said, were he to choose again, he could wish nothing better than to find just such another."[1574]—It was not long before Philip made the attempt. In eighteen months from the date of his conversation with the cardinal, the thrice-widowed husband led to the altar his fourth and last wife, Anne of Austria,—like her predecessor, as we have seen, the destined bride of his son. The facility with which her imperial parents trusted the young princess to the protection of Philip maybe thought to intimate pretty clearly that they, at least, had no misgivings as to the king's treatment of his former wife.
Isabella, at her decease, was but twenty-three years of age, eight of which she had been seated on the throne of Spain. She left two children, both daughters;—Catherine, afterwards married to the duke of Savoy; and Clara Eugenia, who became with her husband, the Archduke Albert, joint ruler of the Netherlands, and who seems to have enjoyed a greater share of both the love and the confidence of Philip, than he ever vouchsafed to any other being.
Such is the story of Queen Isabella, stripped of the coloring of romance, for which, in truth, it has been quite as much indebted to the pen of the historian as to that of the poet. From the whole account, it appears, that, if Carlos, at any time, indulged a criminal passion for his step-mother, such a passion was never requited or encouraged by Isabella, who seems to have felt for him only the sentiments that were justified by their connection, and by the appeal which his misfortunes made to her sympathy. Notwithstanding some feelings of resentment, not unnatural, when, in the words of Brantôme, "he had been defrauded of so fair a prize," there is yet little evidence that the prince's passion for her rose higher than the sentiments of love and gratitude[{499}] which her kindness might well have awakened in an affectionate nature.[1575] And that such, with all his errors, was the nature Carlos, is shown, among other examples, by his steady attachment to Don John of Austria, his uncle, and by his devotion to his early preceptor, the bishop of Osma.