Child after child has been taken from her. First, her only son Juan, barely twenty, always delicate, dying of a fever in the midst of rejoicings for his marriage with a princess of France. Vainly did Ferdinand, who had rushed to his side at the first symptoms of danger, break the news to her gently by letter, describing his gradual decline after he was really dead; but the shaft struck home. “Never,” says Peter Martyr, “could the bereaved parents speak of him.” They laid him in a sumptuous tomb in the Dominican church at Avila. Even after the lapse of so many centuries their love appears in the minute care with which each detail of his marble monument is wrought. The calm, pure, upturned face of the boy, so delicate and young, the light regal circlet on the rich curls of hair, the simple folds of drapery, the small shapely feet, and thin, long hands; the iron gauntlets, placed on one side to show that he was knighted by his father in the field. The mere artistic beauty of the work is forgotten in the anguish of the parents, who used to sit for hours in two stalls opposite, where they could gaze down on the effigy of their son. A picture of lonely [Illustration: Photo by J. Laurent, Madrid. A GENERAL VIEW OF RONDA.] grief sweeping the chords of passionate sorrow to all time. Then her daughter Isabel, Queen of Portugal, whom she loved with all her heart, died; her other daughter Juana, married to Philippe le Bel of Burgundy, is mad, and now a mortal illness has seized herself. * * * * * The queen is reclining on a couch, for she cannot sit up, in a vaulted hall divided into various rooms by thick screens of tapestry. Not far from her is an altar, on which the sacrament and various relics are exposed. The glare from the lighted tapers falls on that once lovely countenance with a cruel glare. She is greatly changed. The soft blue eyes have become too prominent, the face has lost its delicacy of outline, the skin its clearness, and the grey locks which have replaced the abundant meshes of her auburn hair are gathered under a thick coil. Nothing but her inherent majesty remains, and that unalterable expression of calm which has distinguished her all her life, as one ready to meet good or bad fortune with an unmoved mind. As she lies, the great pendants of the gilded roof falling above her head, and escutcheons and badges bordering the walls round--everything bears the token of the joint names, Ferdinand and Isabel, entwined and interlaced. In every detail of the furniture it appears. The heavy carved chairs bear it, the table before her, on which stands a crucifix, her illuminated missal, and the finely wrought silver _casserole_ with strong essences to revive her.