AN AUSTRIAN PRINCESS AT THE SPANISH COURT
Up from the south came the young Prince of the Asturias to meet his
Austrian bride. His greeting was in accordance with the strictest rules
of Spanish etiquette, but all were favorably impressed by his gracious
affability and by the gentle dignity of his manner.
Under the eye of his thoughtful mother, this prince had been carefully
educated to be the ruler of his country. As a child he was attended by
pages of his own age, and they formed mimic councils and played at being
grown-up rulers. He had been taught fencing by a celebrated swordsman,
and at night his sword always hung at the head of his bed. When only
twelve years of age he had been knighted on the battlefield by King
Ferdinand, his father. He could paint and draw, and he could play on
several different instruments, for Queen Isabella was determined that
her son should be one of the most accomplished princes of his time.
The prince was accompanied by his royal father, and the Lady Marguerite
and her suite were escorted in great state to the old city of Burgos.
Here they were met by the queen and the Spanish court.
The steed ridden by Queen Isabella was covered with crimson cloth richly
embroidered with gold. Her saddle was like a chair of state, and she
seemed as if seated on a moving throne. She was still a handsome woman,
with gold-tinted hair and soft, earnest eyes. Following her, and mounted
on richly-caparisoned mules, were scores of court ladies who seemed to
have competed with each other in the magnificence of their costumes.
With other high dignitaries of the church came the queen's confessor,
Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo. This stern man was clothed in all the
splendor of his office, but underneath these elegant robes, we are told,
was haircloth which scraped his flesh, already bruised by the frequent
beatings which he gave himself with a whip.
History tells us that Queen Isabella had taken great pains to arrange
the meeting of the royal family with the Austrian princess, and that she
had planned just who was to kiss and who was to embrace the young
stranger, but however this may be, the ceremony passed off in a
satisfactory manner, and the Lady Marguerite was quite charmed with her
new mother.
[Illustration: Never had preparations so grand been made]
Never had preparations so grand been made for royal nuptials as were
arranged for the wedding of the Prince of the Asturias with the Lady
Marguerite of Hapsburg. There were present grandees representing the
chivalry of Spain, men who had distinguished themselves on the
battlefield and in the tournament; there were ambassadors from the
courts of all the civilized world; there were dignitaries from all the
cities of Spain, there were great ladies in glittering apparel, and the
king and queen in their mantles of state; but most interesting of all
was the young prince, whom his people already loved, and his fair young
bride.
Dressed in his gayest suit, Le Glorieux stood where he could obtain the
best view of his young mistress. At the most interesting moment, just as
the ceremony was about to begin, there was a buzz of excitement around
him, and Don Geronimo whispered in his ear, "Will you stand aside? I am
looking for the pomander-box of Dona Clotilde, which has dropped to the
floor." But the fool folded his arms and pretended not to hear.
And then followed days of fetes and tourneys and tilts. The Spanish
people enjoyed these amusements in a dignified and even a serious
manner, and when the princess and her suite laughed and clapped their
hands at some particularly clever feat, the courtiers of Ferdinand and
Isabella were shocked at such levity.
When the public rejoicings were over the prince and princess went to
their palace at Salamanca, a city of beautiful creamy stone, built on
three hills and in a horse-shoe shape, which, with its stately college
of seventeen thousand students, gave many fetes and outdid itself in
bull-fights to celebrate the coming of the youthful pair.
It is said that one of the first acts of Prince Juan was to engage
professors and performers of music, both instrumental and vocal, who,
with fiddles, organs, cymbals, hautboys, and other instruments, played
the lively airs of Spain. He also had a large military band, and one
afternoon when Le Glorieux was lounging in the window listening to its
music, the princess entered the room. She wore a splendid gown with a
very long train, and she looked quite tall and stately. It was the first
time the jester had seen her alone since their arrival in this country,
and he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "Little Cousin----" just as he
had addressed her since the beginning of their acquaintance. But the
Princess of the Asturias held her head higher and eyed him coldly,
without making a reply.
Very much chagrined at this treatment, for she ever had been most
gracious in her manner toward him, the fool turned and was about to
leave the room without another word, when he was startled by a merry
laugh.
"Did I do it well?" she asked gayly.
"You did it too well! I was already homesick, and if you had turned to
ice like the people of this country, I should have been broken-hearted.
Never was there a place so stiff and cold as this Spanish court. The
king is shorter than the queen and is not very big to look at when you
come to stature, but I would no more think of jesting with him, as I
always did with Max, than I would think of sitting down to have a little
fun with my grandmother's tomb. And I am not a man who is easily
chilled, either!"
"I am told," said the princess, "that I am too careless and gay, and
that I must be like the ladies of Spain. And although I am allowed to
retain my own people about me, they must all conduct themselves in a
grave and ceremonious manner."
"Thank fortune that I am a fool," said Le Glorieux, "for who ever heard
of a jester who was grave and ceremonious? But I shall be sad and
mournful, my Princess, if you freeze up as you did just now, and
continue to stay frozen."
"I must try to please my husband's people," replied Marguerite
seriously. "If I am one day to be Queen of Spain I must learn to be like
a Spanish woman. And I hope that my own people will not offend by
showing too much levity and frivolity."
"One of your suite has become a thorough Spaniard," said Le Glorieux,
"and that is Brutus. He follows the prince everywhere."
"Yes," replied Marguerite, "the prince loves him and Brutus is fond of
his new master. In this he shows good judgment, for the prince is very,
very good."
The princess sighed as she spoke and gazed dreamily out of the window.
"I wonder if she, too, is homesick," thought the jester. "Well, as for
me, I have seen the bull-fights, the flowers, and oranges of Spain, and
I wish I could take my little princess and go home to Max."
From the window they could see Prince Juan walking in the garden, and by
his side stepped Brutus, the master occasionally pausing to pat the
dog's head or to stroke his silky ears. "He is a good man," remarked the
jester, "or Brutus would not be so fond of him."
[Illustration: The Prince took a seat on a marble bench]
Now the prince took a seat on a marble bench beside the fountain and
turned his pale face, with its thoughtful brow, toward the sinking sun,
still absently drawing the hound's ears through his thin white fingers.
"I said something to him this morning that used to make the emperor
laugh, but the prince only smiled in that far-off way, as if his mind
were traveling through the moon," said Le Glorieux. "He is younger than
Philibert, and Philibert is always ready to laugh. And how cheerful and
gay Max always was, though sometimes----"
"Do not, oh, do not!" cried the princess. "Let us not talk of my father,
or any of the people at home! I am going to weep; I shall be as tearful
as poor Cunegunda," she went on, half-laughing, as she brushed the tears
from her eyes. "What would her Majesty, Queen Isabella, say were she to
see me weeping with my jester--she who always is so careful never to
betray her emotions, and who, even when she is ill, never utters a moan?
The prince will come soon and we are to give an audience to some persons
of distinction, and it will not do for me to be seen with swollen eyes."
"There, there," said the jester, taking her handkerchief and wiping her
eyes as if she had been a little child. "Your lashes are long and thick,
you see, and the tears hang to them and make them seem like more tears
than they really are. They will spoil your pretty eyes. And you are not
really sad, you know, for why should you be, when you will one day be
queen of one of the great nations of the earth?"
"Somehow I do not care about that part of it, Le Glorieux, and I hope
King Ferdinand and dear Queen Isabella will live to be very, very old.
But I can be dignified when I like, can I not, Le Glorieux?"
"Most certainly you can, my little lady. That night when you were
brought a prisoner before Anne of Brittany you were as dignified as a
woman of forty."
"And as I grow older it will be easier for me to be silent and cold. I
am only sixteen now."
"Of course it will be. The older people grow, the more silent and cold
they are. That is to say, as a rule. Clotilde, now, is old and cold, but
she is not always silent. There you are smiling, and your tears are all
gone; do not get into the habit of weeping. As I understand it, you are
expected neither to smile nor weep, but get into a humor half-way
between the two and you will be just right."
"Le Glorieux," said the princess, "if you are not happy in Spain, there
is no reason why you should stay here. I will send you home to my
father, who will be glad to have you with him. You have plenty of
friends there and you will be contented."
"And you would be willing to have me go, you could spare me, little
Cousin?" asked the fool sadly.
"I am not thinking of myself. I should miss you sorely. But I want you
to live where you will be happiest."
"Then that will be where you are, little Princess. No matter if
Ferdinand commands me to be as sour and grave as one of the dried-up
professors in the university, here do I remain."
Prince Juan entered. He bent gracefully and pressed Marguerite's fingers
to his lips, then he offered his arm, and thus they left the room.
The jester wandered to the garden, where he remained for a long time on
the seat vacated by the prince. He plucked a branch of pomegranate
blossoms and fastened it to the front of his yellow coat. "Bright colors
help to make one cheerful," murmured he, and rising, he went down to the
river, and leaning over the old stone bridge, he looked into the dingy
waters. "They tell me that the waters of the Tormes River will make one
forget all he knows if he drinks of them," thought the fool. "They have
a saying here if any one forgets anything, 'He has been drinking of the
waters of the Tormes.'" Twilight had closed in around him when he became
conscious of some one standing beside him. It was a tall man in a long
black cloak, and wearing a tall pointed black hat. He was very thin and
his small eyes were like black beads.
"You were gazing into the waters of the Tormes, Senor," said the
stranger, in a melancholy voice.
"If you are telling me that as a piece of news you must not mind if I am
not surprised at it," replied the fool.
"Do you know the effect produced upon those who drink of this water,
Senor?" asked the stranger, ignoring the flippancy of the jester's
reply.
"Judging from the color of the water, I should say the effect would be
gritty," replied Le Glorieux.
"They are the waters of oblivion," went on the tall man; "those who
drink of them forget all they know."
"That would not be a great effort for some people," said Le Glorieux.
"One cup of this water and the past is completely forgotten," repeated
the stranger.
"Some people might be glad to forget their past," remarked the fool.
"But all wisdom is forgotten, too," the tall man urged in reply.
"Have you tried it?"
Without noticing the rather uncomplimentary character of this question,
the stranger clutched the lower corner of his long mantle in his hand
and folding his arms looked down into the river for a few minutes before
he replied, "No, I have not tasted of these waters, for I need all of my
wisdom. I am the most learned doctor of all the learned ones in the
University of Salamanca."
"Retiring and modest of you to say so," replied the jester.
"The whole world has heard of Don Velerio de Farrapos," said that
gentleman.
"Then I do not live in the world, for this is the first time I have
heard that name."
"Do not lie to me," said the other, frowning, "you _have_ heard it."
"Very well, if you insist upon it," said Le Glorieux. "In order to be
easy and comfortable together, we will say that my father had a black
cat of that name. But do not ask me to remember it, if you please. I
already have the name of one Spaniard fixed in my mind, and I am not
going to have it crowded out by yours. But what have you done that makes
you talked about by all the world?"
[Illustration: "I have discovered the elixir of life"]
"I have made a great discovery."
"What is it?"
"The elixir of life."
"You do not mean it?"
"The savants of the Orient," went on the Spaniard, "claimed that there
are one hundred and one ways in which a man may lose his life. He may
die by poison, by drowning, bad living, a stroke of lightning, or in
ninety-six other ways. But if he dies before he is one hundred years
old, it is the result of accident, or of his own ignorance or
wilfulness. So you see it is not so very easy to die, when all is said
and done."
"But you can not convince people of that; they will keep on dying," said
the fool.
"But they need not, now that I have discovered the elixir of life,"
replied Don Velerio, in a deep voice.
Le Glorieux now surveyed him with a feeling of awe. Men were searching
at this very time for the elixir of life, and why should it not have
been discovered by this learned doctor of Salamanca?
"It is only necessary to take it once in fifty years," observed Don
Velerio carelessly.
"That seems a long while between doses," responded the fool. "But while
you are about it, I should think you would add something to the medicine
to put flesh on your bones," he continued, looking at Don Velerio's thin
legs, which, clad in black hose, looked like slender iron rods.
"Flesh," said the learned man, "is nothing."
"It certainly is not much in your case," returned the jester.
"But life, life is everything," went on Don Velerio, waving the hand
which still clutched the corner of the mantle, a gesture which gave him
the appearance of a large bat. "I expect to live to the age of five
thousand five hundred and fifty-seven years," said he.
"I am afraid you are just a trifle ambitious," said the jester.
"The composition of my elixir is a great secret," said the Spaniard. "It
is made from serpents' broth," and he raised his voice exultantly.
"It must be a great secret since you bawl it out like that." Le Glorieux
had now lost all faith in the wisdom of this "learned doctor."
"He doubts me! He dares to doubt me!" cried Don Velerio, in a shrill
voice, and before he had time to realize what was happening, the jester
was pushed over the low balustrade of the bridge and into the dark
waters below, where he fell with a loud splash.
This piece of treachery on the part of Don Velerio would not have been a
very serious matter, for the jester was a good swimmer, had not the
victim of it struck an abutment of the bridge as he went down, which
stunned him and prevented him from making any effort to save himself. He
would have drowned had not two men in a rowboat not far away succeeded
in dragging the unconscious fool into their boat.
* * * * *
When he returned to his senses he was in his own room, and a nun, with a
kind and gentle face, was sitting beside him.
"Why do you come here to watch me sleep?" he asked, and was surprised to
find that his voice was so weak.
"You must be quiet; you have been very ill," said she.
"I ill? Now that is a queer thing, a very queer thing! What made me
ill?"
"Do not trouble your head about it. It is best for you to remain
perfectly silent."
"I will not be quiet until you have answered my questions. If anybody
ought to be interested in this affair, it seems to me I ought to be the
one."
The nun reflected a moment, then she said thoughtfully, "Perhaps it
might be better to tell you, after all. You fell off of the bridge into
the river. You were saved by two boatmen, but you seemed to be in a
stupor."
"I remember all about it now," cried the jester. "It was that old black
spider of a doctor who pushed me in. Let me up and I will break every
bone in his body!"
The sister put her hand to his breast and pushed him back to his pillow
again, and he was astonished to find how easily this delicate woman
could manage him. "You must not grow excited," she said gently.
"He came there and talked to me about his old elixir of life," said Le
Glorieux. "Did it of his own accord; I never invited him; then he said I
doubted him, which I did, and he pushed me over."
"Don Velerio is very sensitive about his discovery," said the nun, "but
he did not intend really to harm you."
"He did a queer thing for a man who did not intend anything by it."
"Don Velerio is flighty at times, and he was sorry for what he had done.
He has sent you a vial of his elixir of life."
"Send it straight back to him and tell him, with my compliments, to take
it himself and see if it will make him----"
The door opened before he had finished the sentence, and the princess
entered, followed by a page who bore a torch to light the way along the
corridors. She was dressed as if for a grand fete. A coronet rested on
her hair, gems flashed about her throat, her arms, and her slender
waist. In all her gorgeous array she knelt on the floor and took in both
her own the hand of the jester.
"Little Cousin," said he.
"Oh, he is conscious!" she cried. "I am so rejoiced to know it! Now you
are going to recover right away, are you not, my poor Le Glorieux?"
"The sight of you, as you look now, ought to make even the broken statue
of a man pull himself together," he replied, smiling faintly.
"Oh, it is so good to hear you talk," she exclaimed, laughing, though
her eyes were full of tears.
"I did not know that it was so strange a thing to hear me talk," said
he.
"Why, you have not said one word for more than two weeks!" she said
impulsively. "But perhaps I ought not to have told you."
"I did not think it best to tell the patient too much, your Highness,"
said the nun almost reproachfully. "He seemed so anxious to talk that I
allowed him to ask some questions, but I was just about to bid him be
quiet when your gracious Highness entered the room."
"I am always blundering, even with you, Le Glorieux," said the princess,
rising, "but now I will go. Try to sleep, try to get well as soon as
possible. And now good-by for the present." She smiled down upon him,
took her long train over her arm, and motioning to the page to open the
door, went from the room.
"She is a great princess; she is the future Queen of Spain, yet she does
not forget the poor jester," murmured the sick man, while to himself his
words sounded as if they had been uttered by some one else and he seemed
to sail away into a silent sea.
When he once more became conscious the bright sun was streaming in at
the open window, and standing beside his bed and looking down at him
with coldly blinking eyes, was the Lady Clotilde.
"I thought I had died and gone to Heaven," said the jester weakly, "but
this is only purgatory."
"I do not know that you ought to talk," said the Lady Clotilde. "I wish
you had not returned to consciousness while Sister Barbara is out. I
never know what to do with sick people."
"I have been talking all my life, and it has not killed me yet," said
the jester.
"I came on behalf of her Highness, the Princess of the Asturias," said
the Lady Clotilde. "Not being able to come in person, she sent me to see
that you were well cared for and had everything that you needed."
"She was here last night," said he; "she said she was so glad to hear me
talk again."
"Oh, that was some time ago. She has been here since, but you did not
recognize her. You have been raving with fever for six weeks."
"Fever?" he asked, considerably puzzled. "Why, I thought I was pushed
over a bridge."
"And so you were, but it terminated in a fever. The leeches do not know
whether the accident brought on the fever, or whether the malady was
already in your system. They have had several consultations about it."
"I do not see the sense of consulting about a thing like that. What
difference does it make what gave me the fever, since it is very evident
that I have it? How long have I been here altogether?"
"Just eight weeks ago this night, for I remember I ordered a gown from
the best tailor of Salamanca, and he promised it in a week, and it has
not come yet, and it was the night of your accident, for I heard about
it just as the tailor was leaving the palace, where he had come to take
my order. Eight weeks, think of it, and that gown no nearer finished, I
will warrant, than it was the day it was fitted! These Spanish tradesmen
are the slowest people in this world." And the Lady Clotilde became very
much excited about her wrongs.
"Well, I think that your situation was better than mine during those
eight weeks," said the jester, "but I dare say I was in no higher fever
than you were throughout that time. I do not suppose I have missed
anything by being ill, except, perhaps, several dozen bull-fights. I
would I were back in Vienna again," he continued, with a sigh.
"Vienna? I would not return there for the world," said the lady. "The
climate of Spain is simply glorious."
"I am not especially fond of climate by itself," said the fool.
"I really do think you ought not to talk," said the Lady Clotilde. "I do
wish you had not returned to consciousness while Sister Barbara is
out."
"You said that before," said the fool fretfully. "Why would it not be
just as easy to wish that Sister Barbara had been in when I did return
to consciousness?"
"I see that you are inclined to be captious," returned the Lady Clotilde
calmly. "They say Prince Juan is like an angel."
"What has that to do with me?" asked Le Glorieux wearily. "He is not a
near relative of mine."
"I forgot that you were ignorant of the fact that his Highness is very,
very ill."
"Ill? His Highness ill?"
"Yes, he also has the fever, the same that you have, but the leeches are
confident that they can cure him."
The fever had now spent itself, and Le Glorieux, being naturally of a
strong constitution, made rapid progress toward recovery. Marguerite
came no more, for every moment was spent beside the couch of the prince,
who was making a brave fight for his life.
But one morning the bells began to toll, and it seemed as if a pall had
settled over the land, for the Prince of the Asturias, the hope of
Spain, was no more! The heir to the throne of a great kingdom had bowed
his young head meekly to the divine will, and gladly had exchanged the
splendors of earth for the joys of Heaven. History says, "All the
nations mourned, and the court, instead of being hung with white serge,
was draped in sackcloth.... Brutus, a beautiful hound belonging to the
prince, could not be induced to leave his body, but went to his tomb and
died there."
It was a pale and sorrowful queen whom Le Glorieux beheld when next he
went to court. The fairy-like columns and sparkling fountains of her
palaces were no longer a delight to Queen Isabella; for her the roses in
the Alhambra gardens had lost their fragrance, and she thought with
indifference of her new possessions across the sea, for she had lost the
dearest treasure of all, and the great queen had become the sorrowing
mother.