When such was the private history of those highest in the land we can only imagine what must have been that of the rest. Feudalism, which was a part of Spain's Gothic inheritance, had always made that country one of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere else found so congenial a soil. There was no great artisan class, as in France, creating a powerful "bourgeoisie"; no "guilds," or simple "burghers," as in Germany, stubbornly standing for their rights; no "boroughs" and "town meetings," where the people were sternly guarding their liberties, as in England. The history of other nations is that of the struggles of the common people against the tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were any "common people" in Spain, they were so effaced that history makes no mention of them. We hear only of kings and great barons and glorious knights; and their wonderful deeds and their valor and prowess--excepting in the wars with the Moors--were always over boundary-lines and successions, or personal quarrels more or less disgraceful, with never a single high purpose or a principle involved. It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, adorned by a mantle of chivalry, and made sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the history of no other European country do we see a great state develop under despotism so unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so unmitigated and unrestrained by gentle human impulses. CHAPTER XVI. Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of Castile. When, after some years, Henry was without children, and with health very infirm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly found herself the acknowledged heir to the throne of Castile. She suddenly became a very important young person. The old King of Portugal was a suitor for her hand, and a brother of the King of England, and also a brother of the King of France, were striving for the same honor. But Isabella had very decided views of her own. Her hero was the young Ferdinand of Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted all her brother's efforts to coerce her, and finally took the matter into her own hands by sending an envoy to her handsome young lover to come to her at Valladolid, with a letter telling him they had better be married at once. Accompanied by a few knights disguised as merchants, Ferdinand, pretending to be their servant, during the entire journey waited on them at table and took care of their mules. He entered Valladolid, where he was received by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isabella's apartments. We are told that when he entered someone exclaimed: _Ese-es, Ese-es_ (that is he); and the escutcheon of the descendants of that knight has ever since borne a double _S.S._, which sounds like this exclamation.