greatest sovereign of the age, and one of the strangest figures
of all time, appeared before his court. The Grand Master of Ceremonies
entered first, in his robe of office, bearing a long white staff. In the
stillness his voice rang out to the ends of the hall:

"His Majesty the King! Her Majesty the Queen!"

Then came a score of halberdiers of the guard, picked men of great
stature, marching in even steps, led by old Mendoza himself, in his
breastplate and helmet, sword in hand; and he drew up the guard at one
side in a rank, making them pass him so that he stood next to the door.

After the guards came Philip the Second, a tall and melancholy figure;
and with him, on his left side, walked the young Queen, a small, thin
figure in white, with sad eyes and a pathetic face--wondering, perhaps,
whether she was to follow soon those other queens who had walked by the
same King to the same court, and had all died before their time--Mary of
Portugal, Mary of England, Isabel of Valois.

The King was one of those men who seem marked by destiny rather than by
nature, fateful, sombre, almost repellent in manner, born to inspire a
vague fear at first sight, and foreordained to strange misfortune or to
extraordinary success, one of those human beings from whom all men
shrink instinctively, and before whom they easily lose their fluency of
speech and confidence of thought. Unnaturally still eyes, of an
uncertain colour, gazed with a terrifying fixedness upon a human world,
and were oddly set in the large and perfectly colourless face that was
like an exaggerated waxen mask. The pale lips did not meet evenly, the
lower one protruding, forced, outward by the phenomenal jaw that has
descended to this day in the House of Austria. A meagre beard, so fair
that it looked faded, accentuated the chin rather than concealed it, and
the hair on the head was of the same undecided tone, neither thin nor
thick, neither long nor short, but parted, and combed with the utmost
precision about the large but very finely moulded ears. The brow was
very full as well as broad, and the forehead high, the whole face too
large, even for a man so tall, and disquieting in its proportions.
Philip bent his head forward a little when at rest; when he looked about
him it moved with something of the slow, sure motion of a piece of
mechanism, stopping now and then, as the look in the eyes solidified to
a stare, and then, moving again, until curiosity was satisfied a