e only in time to embrace her cold remains before they were
consigned to the sepulchre. The desolate monarch abandoned himself to an
agony of grief, and was with difficulty withdrawn from the apartment by
his attendants, to indulge his solitary regrets in the neighboring
monastery of La Sisla.

Isabella well deserved to be mourned by her husband. She was a woman
from all accounts, possessed of many high and generous qualities. Such
was her fortitude, that, at the time of her confinement, she was never
heard to utter a groan. She seemed to think any demonstration of
suffering a weakness, and had the chamber darkened that her attendants
might not see the distress painted on her countenance.[19] With this
constancy of spirit, she united many feminine virtues. The palace, under
her rule, became a school of industry. Instead of wasting her leisure
hours in frivolous pleasures, she might be seen busily occupied, with
her maidens, in the elegant labors of the loom; and, like her ancestor,
the good Queen Isabella the Catholic, she sent more than one piece of
tapestry, worked by her own hands, to adorn the altars of Jerusalem.
These excellent qualities were enhanced by manners so attractive, that
her effigy was struck on a medal, with a device of the three Graces on
the reverse side, bearing the motto, _Has Habet et superat_.[20]

Isabella was but thirty-six years old at the time of her death. Charles
was not forty. He never married again. Yet the bereavement seems to have
had little power to soften his nature, or incline him to charity for the
misconduct, or compassion for the misfortunes of others. It was but a
few months after the death of his wife, that, on occasion of the
insurrection of Ghent, he sought a passage through the territory of his
ancient enemy of France, descended on the offending city, and took such
vengeance on its wretched inhabitants as made all Europe ring with his
cruelty.[21]

Philip was too young at this time to take part in the administration of
the kingdom during his father's absence. But he was surrounded by able
statesmen, who familiarized him with ideas of government, by admitting
him to see the workings of the machinery which he was one day to direct.
Charles was desirous that the attention of his son, even in boyhood,
should be turned to those affairs which were to form the great business
of his future life. It seems even thus early--at this period of mental
depression--the emperor cherished th