That others had pleased his fickle fancy she knew to her cost, and had suffered from pangs of silent jealousy. But that he would be absent from her dying bed did not seem possible. So united had they been, the thought that he might survive her had never troubled her. Now it was a phantom she could not banish--Ferdinand alone! Would another sit beside him in her place? * * * * * “We wait sorrowfully in the palace all day long,” writes the faithful chronicler of her life, Peter Martyr, “tremblingly waiting the hour when she will quit the earth. Let us pray that we may be permitted to follow hereafter where she will go. She so far transcends all human excellence that there is scarcely anything mortal about her. She can hardly be said to die, but to pass into a nobler existence. She leaves the world filled with her renown, and she goes to enjoy life eternal with God in heaven. I write this,” he says, “between hope and fear, while the breath is still fluttering within her.” But the faithful pen of the secretary does not record the presence of Ferdinand at her side. She was mercifully spared the knowledge of his inconstancy. Already, during his campaigns, he had seen the young princess of eighteen, Germaine de Foix, cousin of the King of France, whom he married in such indecent haste, a volatile beauty, brought up at the dissipated Court of Louis XII. For her sake (had she borne him children) he would have severed the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, a greater insult, if possible, to the memory of the queen than his marriage. Indirectly, this marriage was the cause of his death. It is the busy pen of Peter Martyr which records it. In order to invigorate his constitution, he placed himself in the hands of quacks. A violent fever ensued, and (in 1515) he died at Granada. The body of Isabel had already been brought there from the Castle de la Mota and interred within the Capilla Real. Side by side they lie, the royal spouses united at least in death; the truant Ferdinand yearning for the presence of his first love, and at his own request laid beside her. There they rest on two alabaster tombs, a marvel of exquisite workmanship, erected to their memory by their grandson, Charles V. A frigid smile yet lingers on the queen’s marble lips as she turns her head lovingly towards Ferdinand, who, as in life, looks straight out, determined and warlike as he ever was. Both wear their crowns. Beside them, on another monument, is their daughter Juana _la loca_ (mad), her fickle Burgundian at her side. Their countenances are averted, their position as uneasy as was their life. Troubled lines wander over Juana’s form, and the comely head of Philip sinks on a marble pillow in selfish rest. The four coffins lie in a narrow cell beneath; “a small place,” said their grandson, Charles V., “for so much greatness.”