d hand for him to kiss--and when that was done, he
knelt again before the Queen, who did likewise. Then, bowing low as he
passed back before the King, he descended one step and took the chair
set for him in the place that was for the royal princes.

He was alone there, for Philip was again childless at his fourth
marriage, and it was not until long afterwards that a son was born who
lived to succeed him; and there were no royal princesses in Madrid, so
that Don John was his brother's only near blood relation at the court,
and since he had been acknowledged he would have had his place by right,
even if he had not beaten the Moriscoes in the south and won back
Granada.

After him came the high Ministers of State and the ambassadors in a rich
and stately train, led in by Don Antonio Perez, the King's new
favourite, a man of profound and evil intelligence, upon whom Philip was
to rely almost entirely during ten years, whom he almost tortured to
death for his crimes, and who in the end escaped him, outlived him, and
died a natural death, in Paris, when nearly eighty. With these came also
the court ladies, the Queen's Mistress of the Robes, and the maids of
honour, and with the ladies was Dona Ana de la Cerda, Princess of Eboli
and Melito and Duchess of Pastrana, the wife of old Don Ruy Gomez de
Silva, the Minister. It was said that she ruled her husband, and Antonio
Perez and the King himself, and that she was faithless to all three.

She was not more than thirty years of age at that time, and she looked
younger when seen in profile. But one facing her might have thought her
older from the extraordinary and almost masculine strength of her small
head and face, compact as a young athlete's, too square for a woman's,
with high cheekbones, deep-set black eyes and eyebrows that met between
them, and a cruel red mouth that always curled a little just when she
was going to speak, and showed extraordinarily perfect little teeth,
when the lips parted. Yet she was almost beautiful when she was not
angry or in a hurtful mood. The dark complexion was as smooth as a
perfect peach, and tinged with warm colour, and her eyes could be like
black opals, and no woman in Spain or Andalusia could match her for
grace of figure and lightness of step.

Others came after in the long train. Then, last of all, at a little
distance from the rest, the jester entered, affecting a very dejected
air. He stood still a while on the platform, looking abou