A staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high altar.  The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious marbles, which reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver.  On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus, the departed kings and queens of Spain.  Into this mausoleum the King descended with a long train of courtiers, and ordered the coffins to be unclosed.  His mother had been embalmed with such consummate skill that she appeared as she had appeared on her death bed.  The body of his grandfather too seemed entire, but crumbled into dust at the first touch.  From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his grandfather could draw any sign of sensibility.  But, when the gentle and graceful Louisa of Orleans, the miserable man’s first wife, she who had lighted up his dark existence with one short and pale gleam of happiness, presented herself, after the lapse of ten years, to his eyes, his sullen apathy gave way.  “She is in heaven,” he cried; “and I shall soon be there with her;” and, with all the speed of which his limbs were capable, he tottered back to the upper air.

Such was the state of the Court of Spain when, in the autumn of 1699, it became known that, since the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the governments of France, of England and of the United Provinces, were busily engaged in framing a second Treaty of Partition.  That Castilians would be indignant at learning that any foreign potentate meditated the dismemberment of that empire of which Castile was the head might have been foreseen.  But it was less easy to foresee that William would be the chief and indeed almost the only object of their indignation.  If the meditated partition really was unjustifiable, there could be no doubt that Lewis was far more to blame than William.  For it was by Lewis, and not by William, that the partition had been originally suggested; and it was Lewis, and not William, who was to gain an accession of territory by the partition.  Nobody could doubt that William would most gladly have acceded to any arrangement by which the Spanish monarchy, could be preserved entire without danger to the liberties of Europe, and that he had agreed to the division of that monarchy solely for the purpose of contenting Lewis.  Nevertheless the Spanish ministers carefully avoided whatever could give offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by offering a gross indignity to William.  The truth is that their pride had, as extravagant pride often has, a close affinity with meanness.  They knew that it was unsafe to insult Lewis; and they believed that they might with perfect safety insult William.  Lewis was absolute master of his large kingdom.  He had at no great distance armies and fleets which one word from him would put in motion.  If he were provoked, the white flag might in a few days be again flying on the walls of Barcelona.  His