No entreaty could prevail upon Joan to fulfil any of the duties of government. Her father would see to everything, she said, when he returned; all her future work in the world was to pray for the soul of her husband, and guard his dead body. On Sunday, 19th December 1506, after mass at the Cartuja, Joan announced her intention of carrying the body for sepulture in the city of Granada, near the grave of the great Isabel, in accordance with Philip’s last wish.[117] The steppes of Castile in the depth of winter are as bleak and inhospitable as any tract in Europe. For scores of miles over tableland and mountain the snow lay deep, and the bitter blast swept murderously. The Queen cared for nothing but the drear burden that she carried upon the richly bedizened hearse; and with a great train of male servitors, bishops, churchmen, and choristers, she started on her pilgrimage on the 20th December.[118] The nights were to be passed in wayside inns or monasteries, and at each night’s halt the grisly ceremony was gone through of opening the coffin that the Queen might fondle and kiss the dead lips and feet of what had been her husband. At one point on the way, when after nightfall the cortège entered the courtyard of the stopping place, Joan learnt that, instead of being a monastery for men, it was a convent of nuns. Instantly her mad jealousy of women flared up, and she peremptorily ordered the coffin to be carried out of the precincts. Through the crude winter’s night Joan and her attendants kept their vigil in the open field over the precious dust of Philip the Handsome, until daylight enabled them to go again upon their dreary way. Such experiences as this could not be long continued, for Joan was far advanced in pregnancy; and when she arrived at Torquemada, only some thirty miles from her starting-place, the indications of coming labour warned her that she could go no further; and here, on the 14th January 1507, her youngest child, Katharine, was born. There is no doubt whatever that Joan was throughout carefully watched by the agents of her father and Jimenez; and that, although ostensibly a free agent, any attempt on her part to act independently or enter into a political combination would have promptly checked. Her mental malady was certainly not minimised by her father or his agents; who were as anxious to keep her in confinement now as her husband had been. Nevertheless, when every deduction has been made, it is indisputable that in her morbid condition it might have been disastrous to the country to have allowed her to exercise full political power at this time, even if she had consented to do so; though if Ferdinand had not been, as he was, solely moved by his own interests, the unhappy woman might after his arrival have been associated with him in the government, and have retained, at least, her personal liberty and ostensible sovereignty.