olitical failures, was added the bloody treachery of his
royal brother.

The death of this son doubtless first taught Barbara with what cruel
anguish a mother's heart can be visited; but her John had not really died
to her. Accustomed to love him from a distance, she continued to live in
and with him, and in her thoughts and dreams he remained her own.

At first, without leaving the lay condition, she had joined the Dominican
Sisters in the Convent of Santa Maria la Real at Cebrian; but even the
slight constraint which life behind stone walls imposed upon her still
seemed unendurable, so she retired to the little city of Colindres, in
the district of Loredo. There stood the deserted house of Escovedo, the
murdered friend and counsellor of her John and, as everything under its
roof reminded her of the beloved dead, it seemed the most fitting spot in
which to pass the remnant of her days. In it she led an independent but
quiet, secluded life. She spent only a few maravedis for her own wants,
while she used the thousands of ducats which, after her son's death, King
Philip awarded her as an annual income, to make life easier for the poor
and the sick whom she affectionately sought out.

With every tear she dried she believed that she was showing the best
honour to her son's memory.

She was denied the pleasure of placing a flower upon his grave, for King
Philip had done his dead brother the honour which he withheld from him
during life and, though only as a corpse, received him among the members
of his illustrious race. His coffin had been entombed in the cold family
vault of the Escurial, where no sunbeam enters.

But Barbara needed no place associated with his person in order to
remember him; she always felt near him, and memories were the vital air
which nourished her soul. Music remained the best ornament of her
solitary existence, and never did the forms of the son and the father
come nearer to her than when she sang the songs--or in after years played
them on the harp and lute--to which her imperial lover had liked to
listen.

The memory of her John's father now taught her to change the "More,
farther," of his motto into the maxim, "Learn to be content," the memory
of the son, that every sacrifice which we make for the happiness of
another is futile if, besides splendour and glory, fame and honour, it
does not also gain the spiritual blessings whose possession first lends
those gifts genuine value. These much-en