It was more than two years and a half since Ferdinand had seen his daughter Joan. During that time both he and Philip had alternately declared she was quite sane and otherwise, as suited their plans. Now both were agreed, not only that she did not _wish_ to govern her country: but that if ever she _did_ wish, or Castilians wished for her to do so, then her ‘passions and infirmities,’ so vaguely referred to, would make her rule disastrous. It ensured Philip being King of Castile _so long as he lived_, and Ferdinand being master if he survived, and until the majority of his grandson Charles. There is no reason to deny that Joan was wayward, morbid, and eccentric; subject to fits of jealous rage at certain periods or crises, and that subsequently she developed intermittent lunacy. But at this time, according to all accounts, she was not mad in a sense that justified her permanent exclusion from the throne that belonged to her. Philip, heartless, ambitious, and vain, wished to rule Castile alone, according to Burgundian methods, which were alien to Spain and to the Queen. Ferdinand knew that, in any case, such an attempt could not succeed for long; and by permanently excluding Joan he secured for himself the reversion practically for the rest of his life. And so Joan was pushed aside and wronged by those whose sacred duty it was to protect and cherish her, and as Joan the Mad she goes down to all posterity. But old Ferdinand had not yet shot his last bolt, for symmetry and completeness in his villainy was always his strong point. On the very day that the secret compact was signed, he came again to that humble altar of Villafafila, accompanied this time only by those faithful Aragonese friends who would have died for him, Juan Cabrero, who had befriended Colon, and his secretary, Almazan. Before these he swore and signed a declaration that Philip had come in great force whilst he had none, and had by intimidation and fear compelled him to sign a deed so greatly to the injury of his own daughter. He swore now that he had only done so to escape his peril, and never meant that Joan should be deprived of her liberty of action: on the contrary, he intended when he could to liberate her and restore to her the administration of the realm that belonged to her: and he solemnly denounced and repudiated the former oath he had just taken on the same altar. And then, quite happy in his mind, Ferdinand the Catholic went on his way, having left heavily bribed all the men who surrounded doomed Philip, including even the all-powerful favourite Juan Manuel.