nd Montpensier to Madrid to
try their fortunes; but England objected strongly to an alliance
which might make Spain practically a part of France. The candidature
of the French princes was therefore withdrawn.

A prince of the Catholic branch of the Coburgs was then
proposed,--Prince Ferdinand, who made subsequently an excellent
king-consort in Portugal; but to him France objected, as too nearly
allied to the English Crown. Finally the suitors were reduced to
three,--the queen's cousin Enrique (Henry), a rough sailor of rather
radical opinions and turbulent ways; the Comte de Trepani, a Neapolitan
prince, a man of small understanding; and another cousin, Don Francisco
d'Assis, a creature weak alike in mind and body, whom it was an
outrage to think of as fit mate for a young queen. England was
willing to consent to the queen's marrying anyone of these princes,
and also that the Duc de Montpensier should marry the Infanta Luisa,
provided that the queen was first married and had had a child. All
this was fully agreed upon in the conference at Eu. But Christina,
the queen-mother, who had been plundering the Spanish treasury till
she had accumulated an enormous fortune, offered, if Louis Philippe
would use his influence to prevent any inquiry into the state of
her affairs, to further his views as to the Duc de Montpensier.

It seems more like a scene in the Middle Ages than an actual transaction
in our own century, that at midnight, in a Spanish palace, a dissolute
Italian dowager and a French ambassador should have been engaged
in coercing a sovereign of sixteen into a detested marriage. As
morning dawned, the sobbing girl had given her consent to marry
Don Francisco, and the ambassador of Louis Philippe, pale from
the excitement of his vigil, left the palace to send word of his
disgraceful victory to his master. The Duc de Montpensier, who was
in waiting on the frontier, soon arrived in Madrid, and Isabella
and Luisa were married on the same day; while M. Guizot, who was
head of the French Government, and Louis Philippe excused their
breach of faith to the queen of England by saying that Queen Isabella
_was_ married before her sister, though on the same morning.

Isabella at once banished her unwelcome husband to a country seat,
and flung herself headlong into disgraceful excesses.

Queen Victoria was greatly hurt by the treachery displayed by Louis
Philippe and his minister, and doubtless, as a woman she was deeply
so