, and Don Juan, as prime minister, prepared to
restore public confidence. In line with his former policy, he made a
clean sweep of all the members of the Austrian party, and then began to
prepare the way for a French marriage, to strengthen the friendly
feeling of the powerful Louis XIV., who had been married to a Spanish
wife. Scarcely had the promise for this marriage between Louis's niece
Marie Louise and the half-witted Charles been made, when, suddenly, Don
Juan sickened and died, and the queen-mother Mariana was again in power.
There were dark hints of poison; it was insinuated that Mariana knew
more of the affair than she would be willing to reveal; but, whatever
the facts, there was no proof, and there was no opportunity for
accusations. Meanwhile, the preparations for the royal wedding were
continued, in spite of the fact that it was feared that Mariana might
try to break the agreement. But this wily woman, confident in her own
powers, felt sure that she would prove more than a match for this young
French queen who was coming as a sacrifice to enslave Spain to France.
Marie Louise had left her home under protest, strange tales of this
idiot prince who was to be her husband had come to her ears, and she
could only look forward to her marriage with feelings of loathing and
disgust. As all her appeals had been to no avail, she discarded prudence
from her category of virtues, and entered the Spanish capital a
thoughtless, reckless woman, fully determined to follow her own
inclinations, without regard to the consequences. Her beauty made an
immediate impression upon the feeble mind of her consort; but she
spurned his advances, made a jest of his pathetic passion for her, and
was soon deep in a life of dissipation. Mariana, as the older woman,
might have checked this impulsive nature; but she aided rather than
hindered the downfall of the little queen, looked with but feigned
disapproval upon the men who sought her facile favors, and, after a
swift decade, saw her die, without a murmur of regret. Again there were
whispers of poison, but Mariana was still in power, and she lost no time
in planning again for Austrian ascendency and an Austrian succession.
Once more the puppet king was accepted as a husband, and this time by
the Princess Anne of Neuburg, a daughter of the elector-palatine, and
sister of the empress, though, in justice to Anne, it should be said
that she was an unwilling bride and merely came as Marie Loui