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.  Ten more, or even five, might do the rest.  The boy could not be without ambition, and there could be no ambition for him of which the object should be less than a throne.  And yet no word had been breathed against him,—­his young reputation was charmed, as his life was.  In vain Philip had bidden Antonio Perez and the Princess of Eboli use all their wits and skill to prove that he was plotting to seize the crown.  They answered that he loved a girl of the court, Mendoza’s daughter, and that besides war, for war’s sake, he cared for nothing in the world but Dolores and his adopted mother.

They spoke the truth, for they had reason to know it, having used every means in their power to find out whether he could be induced to quarrel with Philip and enter upon a civil war, which could have had but one issue, since all Spain would have risen to proclaim him king.  He had been tempted by questions, and led into discussions in which it seemed certain that he must give them some hope.  But they and their agents lost heart before the insuperable obstacle