I am very anxious to know how your Highness is progressing with the Latin [he wrote on one occasion]. I say this, Señora, because a certain style of Latin is too difficult to be mastered by those who are much occupied with other matters. Nevertheless my belief in your powers of intelligence is so great that, if you really make up your mind to do it, I am convinced you will succeed as you have done with other languages. The courtier here permits himself to eulogize; but the compliment if insincere was yet grounded in sincerity. Peter Martyr found in his royal mistress a correspondent ready to grant his letters their due meed of appreciation, a patroness moreover eager to plant the fruits of the classical renaissance in the somewhat arid soil of Castile. Two other Italians of note at that time in the world of scholarship, Antonio and Alessandro Geraldino, were appointed as tutors to the young princesses; and from their instructions Isabel’s daughters emerged fitting contemporaries of the famous D’Este sisters of Ferrara. It is said that Joanna, the second of the Castilian Infantas, astonished the Flemish Court by immediately replying to the Latin oration of some learned scholar in the same tongue; while the youngest, Catherine, won from the great Erasmus the comment, whether intended as praise or otherwise, that she was “egregiously learned.” Castilian chroniclers, when recording with pride the intelligence and learning of Isabel and her daughters, make a point of showing that such ability did not entirely quench more feminine tastes. The Queen’s visits to the unruly convents of her kingdom in company with her needle and her spinning-wheel have been already mentioned; while many were the gifts of elaborate vestments and altar-cloths that she and her ladies worked for the new Cathedral of Granada, and the other churches and religious houses founded during her reign. That her share in such employment was no mere occasional easy stitch we may perhaps assume when we learn from Father Florez that “her husband never wore a shirt she herself had not woven and worked.” Ferdinand’s chivalry was hardly of the type that would suffer rough or badly-fitting clothes for sentimental reasons. [Illustration: AVILA, TOMB OF PRINCE JOHN, SON OF FERDINAND AND ISABEL FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LACOSTE, MADRID ] “With such a mother,” adds Florez, “the daughters could hardly be idle. They learned to sew, to spin, and to embroider.”