The truth that he was being duped dawned on Alfonso at length, and in abject despair he vowed that he would cast aside his crown and go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or at least end his days in a monastery. So vehement were the messages that he dispatched to Lisbon to this effect that his people took him at his word; and when, having somewhat recovered his spirits, he landed on his own shores, it was to learn that his son had been proclaimed King in his stead. His adventures had now reached a stage when they might easily have drifted from the ludicrous into the tragic, had not Prince John generously withdrawn his claims in his father’s favour. Alfonso V. reigned once more. With unabated anger he laid his plans for a new invasion of Castile and allied himself with malcontent nobles of Estremadura. Rebellion blazed again along the border, fomented by the Bishop of Ebora at the head of some Portuguese troops, but it was the last spurt of an almost exhausted fire. Sympathy at home and abroad were alienated. Louis XI., more hopeful of adding Franche Comté to his possessions than the hostile population of Northern Spain, had come to terms with Castile; Sixtus IV., under pressure from Castile, Aragon, and the Aragonese House of Naples, had revoked his bull of dispensation for Joanna’s marriage; Ferdinand himself, in January, 1479, had succeeded his father peacefully in the three divisions of the western kingdom. [Illustration: JOANNA “LA BELTRANEJA” FROM SITGES’ “ENRIQUE IV, Y LA EXCELENTE SEÑORA.” ] Circumstances thus urged peace; and Alfonso, bowing to necessity, consented to negotiations which ended in the treaty of Lisbon, signed on September 24, 1479. The sovereigns on either side renounced the titles they had usurped; the King of Portugal bound himself by oath never to marry with his niece; Isabel and Ferdinand agreed to pardon their rebellious subjects. For Joanna there was a choice of three things: either to wed the little Prince of Asturias, sixteen years her junior, when he should have reached a marriageable age; or else to enter a convent of the Order of Santa Clara; failing these, to leave Portugal and its dominions for ever. Joanna had been given six months, within which to make her decision. She had suffered much in her troubled life from suitors who had asked her hand for their own ends and for the same reason repudiated her. She had found in her mother’s land her only refuge. These remembrances may have coloured her choice, for in the following year she entered the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra; two ambassadors from Castile being present.