“Oh, Juan, how can you pretend to mistake me!” she cries, clasping her hands; “is it the first time I have told you that while the constable lives I shall never have a happy hour?” Her countenance saddens with real or pretended distress; a deep sigh heaves her bosom, upon which rests a collar of jewels and strings of Orient pearls. With her kerchief she wipes away imaginary tears. Don Juan, who is vaguely contemplating her as a vision of beauty, is suddenly greatly distressed, and rises to comfort her. She puts him back with a pettish motion, and with a troubled air he resumes his seat. “How do I know,” she continues, in a lower voice, “that the magic arts Luna exercises over _you_ may not be employed against _me_?” “Magic arts!” faintly ejaculates the king. “Yes, my lord, all Spain knows it, and is weary of the wickedness of this presumptuous man. It is by infernal arts that he sways you. He will bring the kingdom to destruction. Did he not, like a traitor, turn back from the walls of Granada when the Zegrins were with you, and he should have led your victorious army into the walls of the Alhambra? Does he not conspire with the Infante of Aragon against your life?” So vivid is the picture she calls up of the misdeeds of Luna, that real tears now course each other down her cheeks. She believes in what she says, and this gives conviction to her words. She believes him to be guilty of all of which he is accused, and she knows that he will cross her influence with Don Juan. Above all, she dreads the mysterious action of that occult power he is said to possess. Superstition and ignorance go together in her mind. A Portuguese princess of the fourteenth century is alive to all the prejudices of the time. “What!” cries Don Juan, starting up from his chair in a burst of generous feeling, which he is quite incapable of sustaining, “can you, my queen, ask me seriously to dismiss from my councils and from my heart the hero who has so faithfully upheld the glory of Castile? The tales you accept as true are but the suggestions of envy. The constable has ever done his duty. What do I not owe him! Was it not he who rescued me as a boy from the strong fortress of Tordesillas, where a powerful league, headed by my treacherous cousin, the Infante of Aragon, would have shut me up for life? Who was it that, when the Moors, emboldened by the weakness of Castile, refused to pay the tribute, led on our armies against them and forced them to submission? And if he did not enter the city of Granada the fault was not in him, but in my seditious nobles, whose divided counsels forced him to retreat. Is this the man, the bulwark of my throne, who alone has stood by his king against the factious nobles, the conspiracies of his kindred, and the machinations of his own son? Would you have me deprive _him_ of the honours he so well deserves? High Constable I have created him, and such, by the Holy Mother, he shall die.”