It was a cruel irony that sent Anthony de Bourbon, the shadowy King Consort of Navarre, to deliver the French Consort of the real King of Navarre to her husband on the frontier of the little mountain kingdom, and he probably only accepted the mission in the hope that the long-pending negotiations with Spain, for giving him some adequate compensation, such as the title of King of Sardinia, might be advantageously pushed on such an occasion. Philip fooled poor vain Anthony as long as it suited him, but without the remotest intention of giving any satisfaction to the house of Navarre. When, therefore, in deep snowdrifts the Queen’s cavalcade reached the little frontier town of St. Jean Pied de Port on the last day in the year 1559, and France was all behind them, Anthony and the other Bourbon princes were on the alert to resent any slight that might be offered to them by the Spaniards. The exchange of the Queen to the custody of her husband’s envoys was to be made at a point between St. Jean and the Spanish hamlet of Roncesvalles, but the inclement weather and heavy snow made it impossible to reach the elevated spot agreed upon; and for three days Isabel and her French suite tarried weatherbound at St. Jean. For the first time she donned there the Spanish dress, and received some of her Spanish household; and on the 3rd January 1560 she started on horseback towards the frontier, for she refused to enter her new realm in a litter, and thus, with her veritable army of attendants and baggage-train, she tramped through the savage pass and into the valley of Valcarlos into Spain. The cold was intense, and through the elevated mountain paths the snowstorm drove furiously, yet she pushed bravely on until she could gain the shelter of the monastery church of Our Lady of Roncesvalles in Spanish territory. It was a great concession for the French to make, and Anthony de Bourbon would not have crossed the frontier first but for the insistence of Isabel, and the impossibility of carrying out the ceremonious programme of handing over the Queen in a Pyrenean pass in a mid-winter snowstorm. Further than Roncesvalles he was determined he would not go, though only five miles further, at the village of Espinal, the Cardinal and the Duke with the Spanish train were lodged. At the gate of the Augustinian monastery, where the King of Navarre helped the almost frozen Queen to alight, there stood beside the prior and dignitaries a group of Spanish nobles who had ridden over from Espinal unofficially to greet their new Queen; and after the religious ceremony and prayers in the beautifully decorated church, these nobles and their followers almost came to open fight with the Frenchmen. As Isabel left the church to enter the apartments in the monastery assigned to her, the Spaniards, jealous that in their own country Frenchmen alone should attend the Queen, flocked in unbidden after her, and had to be forcibly ejected by those in attendance upon her.[172]