ime
of her hurried flight to Navarre, she had tarried for a short time in
the little town of Sos, in Aragon, and there she had given birth to a
son, Fernando, who was to be instrumental in bringing peace and glory to
Spain in spite of the fact that he first saw the light in the midst of
such tumult and confusion. Notwithstanding her delicate condition, Juana
was soon in the thick of the fray, as she hastened to the town of
Estella, which had been threatened, fortified the place, and defended it
effectually from all the attacks made upon it by the hostile forces. She
seems to have been a born fighter, and, though her efforts may often
have been misdirected, she must have exerted a powerful influence upon
the mind of her son, who was to show himself at a later day as good a
fighter in a larger cause.

To turn back to Castile now for a time, in the labyrinth of this much
involved period, where the duplication of names and the multiplicity of
places makes it difficult to thread one's way intelligently, it will be
found that the court, during the reign of Henry IV., was chiefly
distinguished by its scandalous immorality. Quintana, in his volume
entitled the _Grandezas de Madrid_, gives enough information on the
subject to reveal the fact that the roues of that period could learn
little from their counterparts to-day, as the most shameless proceedings
were of everyday occurrence, and men and women both seemed to vie with
each other in their wickedness. It would be somewhat unjust to include
the great body of the people in this vicious class, as the most
conspicuous examples of human degradation and degeneracy were to be
found at the court, but the fact remains that public ideas in regard to
moral questions were very lax; the clergy was corrupt, and the moral
tone of the whole country was deplorably low, as judged by the standards
of to-day. Women deceived their husbands with much the same relish as
Boccaccio depicts in his _Decameron_; passions were everywhere the
moving forces, in the higher and lower classes as well, and nowhere was
there to be seen the continence which comes from an intelligent
self-control.

In the midst of this carnival of vice and corruption, King Henry, the
older brother of the Princess Isabella, was a most striking figure. He
had been divorced from his first wife, Blanche of Aragon, on the ground
of impotence, but had succeeded, in spite of this humiliation, in
contracting another alliance, this tim