sure. Nor was it of less moment to a will such as the
young king's that Catharine's passionate love for him had roused as ardent
a love in return.

[Sidenote: Ferdinand of Aragon]

Two months therefore after his accession the Infanta became the wife of
Henry the Eighth. The influence of the king of Aragon became all-powerful
in the English council chamber. Catharine spoke of her husband and herself
as Ferdinand's subjects. The young king wrote that he would obey Ferdinand
as he had obeyed his own father. His obedience was soon to be tested.
Ferdinand seized on his new ally as a pawn in the great game which he was
playing on the European chess-board, a game which left its traces on the
political and religious map of Europe for centuries after him. It was not
without good ground that Henry the Seventh faced so coolly the menacing
growth of France. He saw what his son failed to see, that the cool, wary
king of Aragon was building up as quickly a power which was great enough
to cope with it, and that grow as the two rivals might they were matched
too evenly to render England's position a really dangerous one. While the
French kings aimed at the aggrandizement of a country, Ferdinand aimed at
the aggrandizement of a House. Through the marriage of their daughter and
heiress Juana with the son of the Emperor Maximilian, the Archduke Philip,
the blood of Ferdinand and Isabel had merged in that of the House of
Austria, and the aim of Ferdinand was nothing less than to give to the
Austrian House the whole world of the west. Charles of Austria, the issue
of Philip's marriage, had been destined from his birth by both his
grandfathers, Maximilian and Ferdinand, to succeed to the empire; Franche
Comte and the state built up by the Burgundian Dukes in the Netherlands
had already passed into his hands at the death of his father; the madness
of his mother left him next heir of Castille; the death of Ferdinand would
bring him Aragon and the dominion of the kings of Aragon in Southern
Italy; that of Maximilian would add the Archduchy of Austria, with the
dependencies in the south and its hopes of increase by the winning through
marriage of the realms of Bohemia and Hungary. A share in the Austrian
Archduchy indeed belonged to Charles's brother, the Archduke Ferdinand;
but a kingdom in Northern Italy would at once compensate Ferdinand for his
abandonment of this heritage and extend the Austrian supremacy over the
Peninsula, for Rome and