第7章 THE BIRTHDAY OF THE INFANTA(2)

Indeed,there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada,of which he was already titular Prior,had he not been afraid to leave the little Infanta at the mercy of his brother,whose cruelty,even in Spain,was notorious,and who was suspected by many of having caused the Queen's death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle in Aragon.Even after the expiration of the three years of public mourning that he had ordained throughout his whole dominions by royal edict,he would never suffer his ministers to speak about any new alliance,and when the Emperor himself sent to him,and offered him the hand of the lovely Archduchess of Bohemia,his niece,in marriage,he bade the ambassadors tell their master that the King of Spain was already wedded to Sorrow,and that though she was but a barren bride he loved her better than Beauty;an answer that cost his crown the rich provinces of the Netherlands,which soon after,at the Emperor's instigation,revolted against him under the leadership of some fanatics of the Reformed Church.

His whole married life,with its fierce,fiery-coloured joys and the terrible agony of its sudden ending,seemed to come back to him to-day as he watched the Infanta playing on the terrace.She had all the Queen's pretty petulance of manner,the same wilful way of tossing her head,the same proud curved beautiful mouth,the same wonderful smile -VRAI SOURIRE DE FRANCE indeed -as she glanced up now and then at the window,or stretched out her little hand for the stately Spanish gentlemen to kiss.But the shrill laughter of the children grated on his ears,and the bright pitiless sunlight mocked his sorrow,and a dull odour of strange spices,spices such as embalmers use,seemed to taint -or was it fancy?-the clear morning air.He buried his face in his hands,and when the Infanta looked up again the curtains had been drawn,and the King had retired.

She made a little MOUE of disappointment,and shrugged her shoulders.Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday.

What did the stupid State-affairs matter?Or had he gone to that gloomy chapel,where the candles were always burning,and where she was never allowed to enter?How silly of him,when the sun was shining so brightly,and everybody was so happy!Besides,he would miss the sham bull-fight for which the trumpet was already sounding,to say nothing of the puppet-show and the other wonderful things.Her uncle and the Grand Inquisitor were much more sensible.They had come out on the terrace,and paid her nice compliments.So she tossed her pretty head,and taking Don Pedro by the hand,she walked slowly down the steps towards a long pavilion of purple silk that had been erected at the end of the garden,the other children following in strict order of precedence,those who had the longest names going first.

A procession of noble boys,fantastically dressed as TOREADORS,came out to meet her,and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva,a wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age,uncovering his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain,led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised dais above the arena.The children grouped themselves all round,fluttering their big fans and whispering to each other,and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing at the entrance.Even the Duchess -the Camerera-Mayor as she was called -a thin,hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff,did not look quite so bad-tempered as usual,and something like a chill smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin bloodless lips.

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight,and much nicer,the Infanta thought,than the real bull-fight that she had been brought to see at Seville,on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father.Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobby-horses brandishing long javelins with gay streamers of bright ribands attached to them;others went on foot waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull,and vaulting lightly over the barrier when he charged them;and as for the bull himself,he was just like a live bull,though he was only made of wicker-work and stretched hide,and sometimes insisted on running round the arena on his hind legs,which no live bull ever dreams of doing.He made a splendid fight of it too,and the children got so excited that they stood up upon the benches,and waved their lace handkerchiefs and cried out:BRAVO TORO!BRAVO TORO!just as sensibly as if they had been grown-up people.At last,however,after a prolonged combat,during which several of the hobby-horses were gored through and through,and,their riders dismounted,the young Count of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees,and having obtained permission from the Infanta to give the COUP DEGRACE,he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with such violence that the head came right off,and disclosed the laughing face of little Monsieur de Lorraine,the son of the French Ambassador at Madrid.

The arena was then cleared amidst much applause,and the dead hobbyhorses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow and black liveries,and after a short interlude,during which a French posture-master performed upon the tightrope,some Italian puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of SOPHONISBA on the stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose.