He is seated on a high-backed chair with his back to the light, a mere youth in appearance--his stormy life ended before he was thirty--in which one seeks in vain for the murderous epithet of _El Cruel_. But as his face turns towards the light, the fair locks about his shoulders darken into a dull red and the blue eyes assume a strangely sinister expression. Opposite to him stands his great minister, Albuquerque. During two troubled reigns he has guided the helm of state through troubled periods of rebellion, Moorish wars, and conspiracies. At the death of King Alfonso he skilfully maintained Mary of Portugal--his first protectress--as regent for her son; a difficult task, for as long as he lived Alfonso treated his mistress, Eleanor de Guzman, as a queen. Astute and ready-witted Albuquerque has long understood the inherent cruelty of the young king, as well as his obstinacy. He fostered his boyish fancy for his kinswoman, Maria de Padilla, the better to rule him, until it ripened into such an overwhelming passion that his own influence was undermined. With good cause he curses the day he brought her to Seville, especially since she has borne the king a son, and her enmity to him has grown into an open attack upon his authority. Now, with the knowledge of the queen mother, he has come with a proposition calculated greatly to curb if not to end her power. Albuquerque is barely past the prime of life, but his thin, deeply lined face gives him a look of age. His black Spanish eyes are turned full on his master. Too cunning to betray the intense anxiety he feels, only a slight flush on his cheek tells of his emotion. Well he knows the perverse disposition of the royal youth before him, and that the very fact of a too great insistency will only rouse him to violent opposition, especially on a subject touching him so nearly as that which he has come to discuss. Still he feels that what he has to say is of such paramount importance to the state that, spite of himself, the tones of his voice deepen and his manner acquires a solemn earnestness. “A disputed succession, my lord,” he urges, watching the effect of his bold words; “Maria de Padilla’s children conspiring in every corner of the kingdom, as do now the bastards of your father, Enrique de Trastamare, and his brothers Don Fadique and Don Telmo. Have they not read us a lesson in rebellion? God alone knows what an arduous task was mine to prevent his naming his favourite, Don Enrique, to the succession, and shutting you, my lord, up in a monastery for life. Is Castile again to endure the same evil from which I have freed it? Invoke not Nemesis again, my Lord. You have suffered enough from the same cause to know its bitterness. Think what blood has flowed from that infatuation of your father’s, and the death of Doña Eleanor still to be avenged by the great house of Guzman.” But here Albuquerque is arrested by such a sudden glance of fury from the king, he wisely desists.