As for the French people supping with the ladies at table, that is a thing they are accustomed to do. They do not get the custom from us; but, when their great guests dine with sovereigns, the others in their train dine at tables in the hall with the ladies and gentlemen; and there are no separate tables for ladies. The Burgundians, the English, and the Portuguese also follow this custom; and we on similar occasions to this.... I say this that you may see there was no innovation in what we did, nor did we think we were doing anything wrong in it.... But if it be found wrong after the inquiry I will make, it will be better to discontinue it in future.... As for the bull-fights, I feel with you, though perhaps not quite so strongly. But after I had consented to them, I had the fullest determination never to attend them again in my life nor to be where they were held. One of Queen Isabel’s biographers on the contrary tells us that the Queen admired this national pastime for the skill and courage it demanded, a statement it is difficult to reconcile with the avowed distaste in her own letter. Perhaps her enthusiasm was evoked after the adoption of her device to place false horns, turned points inwards, on the horns of the bull, that the frequent loss of human life might be prevented. It was hardly a suggestion to win her popularity with her subjects, whose enjoyment of a spectacle was always proportionate to its risks. Isabel herself did not lack the true sporting instinct, for the chroniclers record a bear-hunt in the woods near Madrid, where one of the most ferocious of the beasts fell a trophy to her javelin. Courage, the natural heritage of her race, her will and pride exalted almost to a fetish; and Pulgar tells us that “even in the hour of childbirth she disguised her sufferings and forced herself neither to show nor utter the pain that in that hour women are wont to feel and manifest.” Her reserve was deep, in all that concerned her innermost thoughts almost like a curtain veiling some sanctuary, that she felt would be profaned by other eyes, but now and then torn back for the moment by the stress of some sudden emotion. Her agony of mind was obvious after the attempted murder of Ferdinand in Barcelona in August, 1492. The assassin, a madman who believed the King’s death would result in his own accession to the throne, had hurled himself on his victim from behind, as he was descending the palace stairway, inflicting a deep wound in his neck. This, though not fatal, was aggravated by fever, and for many days the King’s life hung in the balance.