Charles II. was now aged seven, and so degenerate and weak a child was he, that he had been up to this period, and continued for some years afterwards, entirely in the hands of women, and treated as an infant in arms. He was dwarfish and puny, with one leg shorter than the other, his gait during the whole of his life being uncertain and staggering. His face was of extraordinary length and ghastly white, the lower jaw being so prodigiously underhung that it was impossible for him to bite or masticate food, or to speak distinctly. His hair was lank and yellow, and his eyes a vague watery blue. This poor creature with his mother at his side, in obedience to the clamour of Don Juan’s friends, was first brought out in public for his subjects to see at a series of visits to the convents and churches of Madrid in the summer of 1668.[272] Just as the King and Mariana were about to start from the palace at Madrid on one of these excursions, in October 1668, an officer came in great agitation to the door of the Queen’s apartment and prayed for audience. He was told that the coach awaited their Majesties, and the Queen could not see him then, but would receive him when she returned. He begged in the meanwhile to be allowed to stay in a place of safety in the palace. This request made his visit seem important enough for Mariana to be informed of it: and she ordered him to be introduced at once. When he entered he threw himself upon his knees and besought that he might speak with her alone; and for a half hour he was closeted with the Queen. The story he had to tell was of a widespread conspiracy of Don Juan and his friends against the Regency, and without delay the net was cast that swept into prison one of Don Juan’s principal agents in Madrid, Patiño, and all his household. In a day or two a force of soldiers was despatched to Consuegra to arrest Don Juan himself, but found the bird flown. Behind him he had left a document addressed to the Queen, violently denouncing Nithard as a tyrant and a murderer, whilst protesting his own loyalty to his father’s son. Madrid began again to murmur at the persecution of a Spanish prince in Spain by a foreign Jesuit, and though a brisk interchange of manifestoes and recriminatory pamphlets was carried on, the great mass of the people were unquestionably on the side of Don Juan against the German Queen and her Jesuit favourite.