who but a short time before--so it seemed to him--had come from the
gay country of France, and had withered away in the sombre
splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after the
birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom
twice in the orchard, or plucked the second year's fruit from the
old gnarled fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-
grown courtyard. So great had been his love for her that he had
not suffered even the grave to hide her from him. She had been
embalmed by a Moorish physician, who in return for this service had
been granted his life, which for heresy and suspicion of magical
practices had been already forfeited, men said, to the Holy Office,
and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier in the black
marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her in on
that windy March day nearly twelve years before. Once every month
the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his
hand, went in and knelt by her side calling out, 'Mi reina! Mi
reina!' and sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in
Spain governs every separate action of life, and sets limits even
to the sorrow of a King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands
in a wild agony of grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the
cold painted face.

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the
Castle of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and
she still younger. They had been formally betrothed on that
occasion by the Papal Nuncio in the presence of the French King and
all the Court, and he had returned to the Escurial bearing with him
a little ringlet of yellow hair, and the memory of two childish
lips bending down to kiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage.
Later on had followed the marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a