y
guarded castle a life that suited her quiet tastes.

A sorrowful smile curled his lips as he recalled the agreement which they
had made just before a separation. At that time both were young, yet how
willingly she had accepted his proposal that, when age approached, they
should separate forever, that she in one cloister and he in another might
prepare for the end of life!

What reply would a woman with true love in her heart have made to such a
demand?

No, no, Isabella had felt as little genuine love for him as he for her!
Her death had been a sorrow to him, but he had shed no tears over it.

He could not weep. He no longer knew whether he was able to do so when a
child. Since his beard had grown, at any rate, his eyes had remained dry.
The words of the Roman satirist, that tears were the best portion of all
human life, returned to his memory. Would he himself ever experience the
relief which they were said to afford the human heart?

But who among the living would he have deemed worthy of them? When his
insane mother died, he could not help considering the poor Queen
fortunate because Heaven had at last released her from such a condition.
Of the children whom his wife Isabella and Johanna van der Gheynst had
given him, he did not even think. An icy atmosphere emanated from his son
Philip which froze every warm feeling that encountered it. He remembered
his daughter with pleasure, but how rarely he was permitted to enjoy her
society! Besides, he had done enough for his posterity, more than enough.
To increase the grandeur of his family and render it the most powerful
reigning house in the world, he had become prematurely old; had
undertaken superhuman tasks of toil and care; even now he would permit
himself no repose. The consciousness of having fulfilled his duty to his
family and the Church might have comforted him in this hour, but the plus
ultra--more, farther--which had so often led him into the conflict for
the dream of a world sovereignty, the grandeur of his own race, and
against the foes of his holy faith, now met the barrier of a more
powerful fate. Instead of advancing, he had seemed, since the defeat at
Algiers, to go backward.

Besides, how often the leech threatened him with a speedy death if he
indulged himself at table with the viands which suited his taste! Yet the
other things that remained for him to enjoy scarcely seemed worth
mentioning. To restore unity to the Church, to make the crowns wh