ced next the beautiful
Margaret. After reposing for a little while they were led to the
ball-room, brilliantly lighted with innumerable torches of perfumed wax
and hung with tapestry of gold and silk, representing in fourteen
embroidered designs the chief military exploits of Spinola. Here the
banquet, a cold collation, was already spread on a table decked and
lighted with regal splendour. As soon as the guests were seated, an
admirable concert of instrumental music began. Spinola walked up and down
providing for the comforts of his company, the Duke of Aumale stood
behind the two princesses to entertain them with conversation, Don Luis
Velasco served the Princess of Conde with plates, handed her the dishes,
the wine, the napkins, while Bucquoy and Visconti in like manner waited
upon the Princess of Orange; other nobles attending to the other ladies.
Forty-eight pages in white, yellow, and red scarves brought and removed
the dishes. The dinner, of courses innumerable, lasted two hours and a
half, and the ladies, being thus fortified for the more serious business
of the evening, were led to the tiring-rooms while the hall was made
ready for dancing. The ball was opened by the Princess of Conde and
Spinola, and lasted until two in the morning. As the apartment grew warm,
two of the pages went about with long staves and broke all the windows
until not a single pane of glass remained. The festival was estimated by
the thrifty chronicler of Antwerp to have cost from 3000 to 4000 crowns.
It was, he says, "an earthly paradise of which soon not a vapour
remained." He added that he gave a detailed account of it "not because he
took pleasure in such voluptuous pomp and extravagance, but that one
might thus learn the vanity of the world." These courtesies and
assiduities on the part of the great "shopkeeper," as the Constable
called him, had so much effect, if not on the Princess, at least on Conde
himself, that he threatened to throw his wife out of window if she
refused to caress Spinola. These and similar accusations were made by the
father and aunt when attempting to bring about a divorce of the Princess
from her husband. The Nuncius Bentivoglio, too, fell in love with her,
devoting himself to her service, and his facile and eloquent pen to
chronicling her story. Even poor little Philip of Spain in the depths of
the Escurial heard of her charms, and tried to imagine himself in love
with her by proxy.

Thenceforth there was a s