e just before a separation. At that time both were
young, yet how willingly she had accepted his proposal that, when age
approached, they should separate forever, that she in one cloister and
he in another might prepare for the end of life!

What reply would a woman with true love in her heart have made to such a
demand?

No, no, Isabella had felt as little genuine love for him as he for her!
Her death had been a sorrow to him, but he had shed no tears over it.

He could not weep. He no longer knew whether he was able to do so when
a child. Since his beard had grown, at any rate, his eyes had remained
dry. The words of the Roman satirist, that tears were the best portion
of all human life, returned to his memory. Would he himself ever
experience the relief which they were said to afford the human heart?

But who among the living would he have deemed worthy of them? When
his insane mother died, he could not help considering the poor Queen
fortunate because Heaven had at last released her from such a condition.
Of the children whom his wife Isabella and Johanna van der Gheynst had
given him, he did not even think. An icy atmosphere emanated from
his son Philip which froze every warm feeling that encountered it. He
remembered his daughter with pleasure, but how rarely he was permitted
to enjoy her society! Besides, he had done enough for his posterity,
more than enough. To increase the grandeur of his family and render it
the most powerful reigning house in the world, he had become prematurely
old; had undertaken superhuman tasks of toil and care; even now he would
permit himself no repose. The consciousness of having fulfilled his duty
to his family and the Church might have comforted him in this hour,
but the plus ultra--more, farther--which had so often led him into the
conflict for the dream of a world sovereignty, the grandeur of his own
race, and against the foes of his holy faith, now met the barrier of
a more powerful fate. Instead of advancing, he had seemed, since the
defeat at Algiers, to go backward.

Besides, how often the leech threatened him with a speedy death if he
indulged himself at table with the viands which suited his taste! Yet
the other things that remained for him to enjoy scarcely seemed worth
mentioning. To restore unity to the Church, to make the crowns which he
wore the hereditary possessions of his house, were two aims worthy of
the hardest struggles, but, unless he deceived himself, he co