men deceived their husbands with much the same relish as
Boccaccio depicts in his _Decameron_; passions were everywhere the
moving forces, in the higher and lower classes as well, and nowhere was
there to be seen the continence which comes from an intelligent
self-control.

In the midst of this carnival of vice and corruption, King Henry, the
older brother of the Princess Isabella, was a most striking figure. He
had been divorced from his first wife, Blanche of Aragon, on the ground
of impotence, but had succeeded, in spite of this humiliation, in
contracting another alliance, this time with the beautiful, but not
overscrupulous, Juana of Portugal. Beltran de Cueva, a brilliant
nobleman, was the favorite and influential person at the court at this
time, and his gradual rise to favor had been due in no small measure to
the protection of the new queen, who was Beltran's all but acknowledged
mistress and took no pains to conceal the matter at any time. In fact,
at a great tournament held near Madrid in 1461, soon after Juana's
arrival at the court, Beltran posed as her preferred champion, and held
the lists against all comers in defence of his mistress's preeminent and
matchless beauty. The king was far from displeased at this liaison
between Beltran and the queen, and he was so delighted at the knight's
unvarying success in this tournament, that the story goes that he
founded a monastery upon the spot and named it, in honor of Saint Jerome
and Beltran, San Geronimo del Paso, or of the "passage of arms"! The
king was little moved by all this, for the simple reason that he was
paying a most ardent court at the same time to one of the queen's ladies
in waiting. This Lady Guiomar, his mistress, was beautiful, but bold and
vicious, as her relations with such a king demonstrate, but for a time
at least she was riding upon the crest of the wave. Proud in her
questionable honor, and daring to be jealous of the real queen, she made
King Henry pay dearly for her favors, and she was soon installed in a
palace of her own and living in a splendor and magnificence which
rivalled that of the queen herself. The Archbishop of Seville, strange
to relate, openly espoused her cause. Her insolent and domineering ways
were a fit counterpart to those of the queen, and the unfortunate people
were soon making open complaint. Beltran, the king in fact, was the open
and accepted favorite of the queen, and Henry, the king in name only,
was devoting