Distrust and suspicion prevailed on all hands. It had been arranged, after much courtly wrangling, that the transfer of the custody of the Queen should take place at a point exactly midway between Roncesvalles and Espinal, but King Anthony made the weather an excuse—probably a perfectly good one—for urging the Spaniards to come the whole way to Roncesvalles, rather than expose the Queen and themselves to a long ceremony in an open field three feet deep in snow. But Infantado was shocked at the idea that he and his brother the Cardinal should be asked to go a step further than the Frenchmen, and refused. Anthony remonstrated, but in vain; and in the lone monastery in the Pyrenean valley Isabel passed two more days waiting for either the pride or the snow to melt. At length she lost patience. She was as tenacious of French honour as any one, but she well knew that the success of her mission depended upon her winning the affections of the Spaniards, and on the 5th January she sent for Navarre and told him that she intended herself to ride to the spot agreed upon for the exchange. The French nobles were indignant, and at first inclined to shirk the journey, but Isabel, young as she was, could be imperious and insisted; and in torrents of sleet the great cavalcade, with the ceremonial finery already bedraggled, had prepared to start, when the welcome message came from Espinal that the Duke and the Cardinal had relented, and were now on their way to Roncesvalles to obey, as they said, the summons of their Queen. The utmost confusion then ensued, for the whole of the baggage, with hangings, furniture and dresses had been packed, and much of it had already started forward, especially the best frocks and furbelows of Isabel’s crowd of ladies, who saw their beds and finery no more for many a long day. The light was failing in the stormy winter day when Cardinal Mendoza and his brother Infantado, preceded by sixty Spanish nobles in brave attire, marched side by side up the great torch-lit hall, at the end of which Cardinal de Bourbon stood upon a canopied dais, surrounded by French ecclesiastics and nobles. Under the cloth of state, blazoned with the lilies of France, the powers of the envoys were exchanged and read; and then, with much stately salutation and stilted verbiage, the Spanish nobles were led to the chamber where, upon a raised throne, Isabel awaited them with King Anthony and the two Bourbon ladies. But the place, a solitary mountain monastery, was unfit for courtly ceremonies; and the Spaniards were so eager to do homage to their new Queen that soon all seemliness was lost, and a jostling crowd filled the presence chamber, each Spaniard trying to get the best place and hustling rudely aside the French, and even the French ladies in attendance, until the latter had to retire.