Ferdinand had at his side at this juncture the great Cardinal Jimenez. The stern Franciscan had been no friend of the King, who had opposed his appointment as primate; but he was a patriotic Spaniard, and could not fail to see that if Flemish Philip was paramount in Spain, the work of Isabel for the faith would be in peril. Ferdinand, he knew, was an able and experienced ruler, who would not greatly change the existing system; and he threw all his powerful influence on the side of an arrangement that might leave Ferdinand real power in Castile, without entirely alienating Philip. Above all, Jimenez was determined to prevent the ambitious Castilian nobles from again dominating the government; which they hoped to do if an inexperienced foreigner like Philip took the reins. It was, indeed, quite as much a struggle between Ferdinand and Jimenez and the Castilian nobles, as between Ferdinand and his son-in-law. But Jimenez’s patriotic efforts met with little success, so far as Philip was concerned; and, in the meantime, Ferdinand, whilst ostensibly solacing himself in hunting, was quietly planning a characteristic stroke at his enemy. He was fifty-five years of age and still robust, and he bethought himself that he might yet win the game by a second marriage. It was almost sacrilege to contemplate such a thing in the circumstances; but to Ferdinand of Aragon any crooked way was straight that led him to his goal. So he sent his natural son, Hugo de Cardona, to propose secretly to the King of Portugal that the forgotten Beltraneja should leave her convent and become Queen of Aragon, joining her claims to Castile to those of Ferdinand and ousting Joan and Philip.[104] It was a wicked cynical idea, for it made Isabel a usurper; but neither the King of Portugal nor his cousin, the Beltraneja, would have anything to say to it; so Ferdinand turned towards a solution, which, if not quite so iniquitous morally, was even more inimical to the interest of Spain as a nation. This was nothing less than to outbid Philip for the friendship of the King of France, upon which he mainly depended to frustrate his father-in-law’s plans. Ferdinand had broken all his former covenants with Louis XII. The French had been turned out of Naples, and the great Gonzalo de Cordova was there as Ferdinand’s viceroy. He was a Castilian; and already Ferdinand’s spies had reported that the Castilian nobles, in union with Philip and France, were tampering with Cordova’s loyalty and endeavouring to establish the claim of Castile, instead of Aragon, to Naples. Ferdinand, with what sincerity may be supposed, rapidly patched up an alliance with Louis XII., by which the widowed King of Aragon was to marry the niece of the King of France, Germaine de Foix, a spoiled and petted young beauty of twenty-one. Any heirs of the marriage were to inherit Aragon, Sicily, and Naples; but in the case of no children being left, Naples was to be divided between France and Aragon; great