In the end Joanna’s stubborn obstinacy was conquered, and she returned to the castle; but after such a scene few could doubt that she was at any rate temporarily insane; and the Queen, conscious that her own days were drawing to a close, trembled at the thought of her country’s future, delivered to the moods of such a ruler. “Cursed fruit of the tree that bore her; ill-fated seed of the land that gave her birth, was this daughter for her mother,” wrote Peter Martyr bitterly; and Isabel’s star, which had risen in such splendour out of the murk of Henry IV.’s misgovernment, was destined to sink amid the shame of Joanna’s folly. In the spring of 1504 the Archduchess sailed to Flanders; and Queen Isabel, guessing the scandals that would follow her footsteps when her own restraining influence was removed, said good-bye to her with a sick heart. Feeble in body, so that every task seemed an effort, she herself turned more and more from worldly matters to the prayers and meditations that drew her ever closer in touch with the land of her desire towards which she was hastening. Yet neither her kingdom nor people were far from her thoughts. In 1503, when Ferdinand had gone north to protect the border counties from what was rumoured to be an enormous invading army, her old martial spirit had revived; and she busied herself in Segovia, as in the old days, in collecting troops and despatching them to the seat of war. With the news of Spanish victories her conscience smote her. The flying French! These also were a Christian race, fighting for their own land. Recoiling from the thought of such a slaughter, she wrote to Ferdinand, praying him to stay his hand; and, whether moved by her wish or his own foresight, he contented himself with driving his foes across the border. Soon afterwards Louis XII. agreed to an armistice that freed the Pyrenean provinces from war. Triumph in the north of Spain was followed by the news of Gonsalvo de Cordova’s victories in Naples; but joy at these successes was counterbalanced by the serious state of the Queen’s health. She and Ferdinand had fallen ill of fever in Medina del Campo in the summer of 1504; and, while his constitution rallied from the attack, anxiety for him and her own weakness aggravated her symptoms, and it was feared that these would end in dropsy. “We sit sorrowful in the palace all the day long,” wrote Peter Martyr early in the autumn, “tremulously waiting the hour when religion and virtue shall quit the earth with her.” Isabel herself knew the end was not far off, and bade those about her restrain their tears. When she heard of the processions and pilgrimages made throughout the kingdom in the hope of restoring her to health she asked that her subjects should pray “not for the safety of her life but the salvation of her soul.”