Valois, Queen of Navarre. Her subsequent visit to her young adorer at
Namur, to be recorded in a future page of this history, was destined to
mark the last turning point in his picturesque career. On his way to the
Netherlands he held a rapid interview with the Duke of Guise, to arrange
his schemes for the liberation and espousal of that noble's kinswoman,
the Scottish Queen; and on the 3rd of November he arrived at Luxemburg.

There stood the young conqueror of Lepanto, his brain full of schemes,
his heart full of hopes, on the threshhold of the Netherlands, at the
entrance to what he believed the most brilliant chapter of his life--
schemes, hopes, and visions--doomed speedily to fade before the cold
reality with which he was to be confronted. Throwing off his disguise
after reaching Luxemburg, the youthful paladin stood confessed. His
appearance was as romantic as his origin and his exploits. Every
contemporary chronicler, French, Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Roman, have
dwelt upon his personal beauty and the singular fascination of his
manner. Symmetrical features, blue eyes of great vivacity, and a
profusion of bright curling hair, were combined with a person not much
above middle height; but perfectly well proportioned. Owing to a natural
peculiarity of his head, the hair fell backward from the temples, and he
had acquired the habit of pushing it from his brows. The custom became a
fashion among the host of courtiers, who were but too happy to glass
themselves in so brilliant a mirror. As Charles the Fifth, on his
journey to Italy to assume the iron crown, had caused his hair to be
clipped close, as a remedy for the headaches with which, at that
momentous epoch, he was tormented, bringing thereby close shaven polls
into extreme fashion; so a mass of hair pushed backward from the temples,
in the style to which the name of John of Austria was appropriated,
became the prevailing mode wherever the favorite son of the Emperor
appeared.