The King, not content with conferring upon his favourite Manuel the Alcazar of Segovia, now entrusted to his keeping the castle of Burgos, where it was determined to celebrate the surrender by entertaining Philip at a banquet. After the feast the King was taken ill of a malignant fever, it was said, caused by indulgence or over-exercise, and Philip lay ill for days in raging delirium. Joan, dry-eyed and cool, never left his side, saying little, but attending assiduously to the invalid. At one o’clock on the 25th September 1506 Philip I., King of Castile, breathed his last, in his twenty-eighth year: but yet Joan, without a tear or a tremor, still stayed by his side, deaf to all remonstrance and condolence, to all appearance unmoved. She calmly gave orders that the corpse of her husband should be carried in state to the great hall of the Constable’s palace upon a splendid catafalque of cloth of gold, the body clad in ermine-lined robes of rich brocade, the head covered by a jewelled cap, and a magnificent diamond cross upon the breast. A throne had been erected at the end of the hall, and upon this the corpse was arranged, seated as if in life. During the whole of the night the vigils for the dead were intoned by friars before the throne, and when the sunlight crept through the windows the body, stripped of its incongruous finery, was opened and embalmed and placed in a lead coffin, from which, for the rest of her life, Joan never willingly parted.[112] Joan, in stony immobility, dazed and silent, gave no indication that she understood the tremendous importance of her husband’s death; but courtiers and nobles, Castilians and Teutons alike, did not share her insensibility. Dismay fell upon the rapacious crew, fierce denunciations of poison,[113] scrambling for such plunder as could be grasped,[114] and dread apprehensions as to what would happen to them all when the King of Aragon should return. Joan had to be forcibly removed from the corpse; and for days remained shut up in a darkened room without speaking, eating, or undressing. When, at length, she learnt that the coffin had been carried to the Cartuja de Miraflores, near Burgos, she insisted upon going thither, and ordered an immense number of new mourning garments fashioned like nun’s weeds. Arriving at the church, she heard mass, and then caused the coffin to be raised from the vault and broken open, the cerecloths removed from the head and feet, which she kissed and fondled until she was persuaded to return to Burgos, on the promise that the coffin should be kept open for her to visit it when she pleased; which she did thenceforward every few days whilst it remained there.