Isabel remained calm and dignified, determined to say nothing to offend the Spaniards; but when the Mendozas advanced, and the actual exchange was to be made, she turned pale as she stood to receive and greet them. Through the interminable pompous speeches that accompanied her transfer she remained outwardly unmoved, but when Navarre had actually handed to the custody of Spaniards ‘this princess, whom I have taken from the house of the greatest king in the world to be delivered to the most illustrious sovereign upon earth,’ and the Bourbon princes came forward and knelt to say farewell, the girl’s strength broke down, and she wept bitterly. Cardinal Mendoza, apparently to improve the occasion, advanced and chanted the verse, _Audi filia et vide inclina aurem tuam_, and the response was intoned by another Spanish priest, _obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui_. She loved her people and the home of her fathers dearly; she was going, almost a child, to live the rest of her life amongst strangers who had been the enemies of her house for generations, to wed a man she had never seen, but of whom she could have heard little but evil; and, as the words of the versicle were croaked by the ecclesiastic, they seemed to the overwrought girl a sentence of doom, and in an agony of tears she threw herself into the arms of Anthony of Navarre and his brother the Cardinal. She was led away gently by Infantado, with some chiding words that she, the Queen of Spain, should so condescend to the Duke of Vendome. In the midst of her grief she answered with spirit that she did so by order of her brother, and, ‘as to princes of the blood, and after the fashion of the nation to which, up to that moment, she had belonged.’[173] And, so still in tears, the beautiful black-eyed girl was led to the Spanish litter awaiting her, and through the heavily-falling snow was carried, to the sound of many hautboys and trumpets, to the wretched village of Burgete, where she was to pass the night; even there, comforted by the beds, hangings, lights, food and delicacies, sent by her French countrymen to furnish forth her poor quarters.’[174]