With many misgivings Isabel bade the latter good-bye and consigned her to the grand fleet in the harbour of Lerida that was to convey her to the Netherlands and bring back from thence the Prince of Asturias’ betrothed. The Infanta Joanna, in spite of her careful training, had shown at times an alarming lack of mental balance. She could be clever and witty, but also morose or, if roused, recklessly passionate in her speech. From a home, where the air breathed decorum and self-control, she now went to a pleasure-loving Court presided over by a fickle Adonis. Would she cling tenaciously to the orthodox views in which she had been bred amid surroundings palpably lax and cynical? Would she know how to keep her jealousy in leash, if Philip “the Fair,” as in all probability, proved faithless? Would she hold her head high and steer her course with dignity amid the many political pitfalls, that would be laid for her in a strange land? The Queen could only sigh in answer to these questions. Joanna in many ways resembled her grandmother and namesake, the Admiral’s daughter, Joanna Enriquez, and that passionate temperament would in a moment of crisis be its own councillor. Advice and warning were of little avail. The Spanish bride in her ship of state sailed away northwards; and Isabel watched the clouds gather with gloomy forebodings. Weeks passed, and she was tortured with anxiety till at length news came that, although the fleet had been compelled to shelter in English harbours and several of the vessels had been lost, yet her daughter was safe in Flanders and soon to be married at Lille. Early in March, 1497, Margaret of Austria after an equally adventurous voyage, whose dangers induced her to compose light-heartedly her own epitaph, landed in Spain and was welcomed with all the state and ceremony befitting a future Queen. How this matrimonial venture, introducing into the close air of the Spanish Court a Paris-bred gaiety and insouciance, would have stood the test of time we cannot tell. The Prince and his bride were young; and, if her contempt of convention scandalized the Castilian grandee, he could blame her youth and build hopeful arguments on feminine adaptability. Thus the brief honeymoon, a triumphal progress from one large town of the kingdom to another, was a period of unmixed rejoicing in Spain. All promised well. Even the Princess Isabel had put aside her long mourning and consented at last to share the throne of Portugal with her patient suitor, demanding however with the fanaticism of her race, so strangely in contrast with her natural sweetness, that Emmanuel’s wedding-gift to her should be the expulsion of the Jews from the land to which she went. The glory of the Faith! The glory of Spain! Were they in truth achieved? the Queen must have asked herself, as she and Ferdinand attended their daughter’s second wedding in the border town of Alcantara.