he floor of his most private room,
with awkward, ungainly steps, stumbling more than once against a cushion
that lay before his great armchair, he saw clearly before him the whole
dimensions of that power to which he had unwillingly raised his brother.
The time had been short, but the means used had been great, for they had
been intended to be means of destruction, and the result was tremendous
when they turned against him who used them. Philip was old enough to
have been Don John's father, and he remembered how indifferent he had
been to the graceful boy of twelve, whom they called Juan Quixada, when
he had been brought to the old court at Valladolid and acknowledged as a
son of the Emperor Charles. Though he was his brother, Philip had not
even granted him the privilege of living in the palace then, and had
smiled at the idea that he should be addressed as "Serene Highness."
Even as a boy, he had been impatient to fight; and Philip remembered how
he was always practising with the sword or performing wild feats of
skill and strength upon half-broken horses, except when he was kept to
his books by Dona Magdalena Quixada, the only person in the world whom
he ever obeyed without question. Every one had loved the boy from the
first, and Philip's jealousy had begun from that; for he, who was loved
by none and feared by all, craved popularity and common affection, and
was filled with bitter resentment against the world that obeyed him but
refused him what he most desired.

Little more than ten years had passed since the boy had come, and he had
neither died a natural death nor fallen in battle, and was grown up to
young manhood, and was by far the greatest man in Spain. He had been
treated as an inferior, the people had set him up as a god. He had been
sent out to command expeditions that be might fail and be disgraced; but
he had shown deeper wisdom than his elders, and had come back covered
with honour; and now he had been commanded to fight out the final battle
of Spain with the Moriscoes, in the hope that he might die in the fight,
since he could not be dishonoured, and instead he had returned in
triumph, having utterly subdued the fiercest warriors in Europe, to reap
the ripe harvest of his military glory at an age when other men were in
the leading-strings of war's school, and to be acclaimed a hero as well
as a favourite by a court that could hardly raise a voice to cheer for
its own King. Ten years had done all that.