His reasons were well founded, for events were passing in Mariana’s palace that rendered her more unpopular than ever; and, by the will of Philip IV., her regency would come to an end when her son attained his fifteenth year late in the next year 1675. It had been hoped that with the banishment of Nithard and the absence from the capital of Don Juan, the factions that divided the Court would have held their peace during the few years the regency lasted; and possibly this would have been the case if the Queen had been prudent. Her unwise favour to Nithard had already made her extremely unpopular, for foreign Queens in Spain were always suspect; but she had learned nothing from her favourite’s ignominious expulsion; and soon a confidant, less worthy far than Nithard, had completely captured the good graces of the Queen. This was a young gentleman of no fortune named Fernando de Valenzuela. He was one of those facile, plausible, Andaluces, a native of Ronda, who had figured so brilliantly in the Court of Philip IV. and Mariana, where the accomplishment of deftly turning amorous verse, improvising a dramatic interlude, or contriving a stinging epigram, opened a way to fortune. He had been a member of the household of the Duke of Infantado, and upon the death of the latter, had attached himself to Father Nithard, who needed the aid of such men. Valenzuela was not only keen and clever, but extremely handsome, in the black-eyed Moorish style of beauty, for which the people of Ronda are famous, and he soon managed to gain the full confidence of both Nithard and the Queen, whom he served as a go-between and messenger, a function which he continued after the Jesuit had been expelled. He had married the Queen’s favourite half-German maid, and had been appointed a royal equerry; both of which circumstances gave a pretext for his continual presence in the palace; and at the time of the agitation against Nithard, and afterwards, he had been extremely useful in conveying to the Queen all the comments that could be picked up by sharp ears in the Calle Mayor and Liars’ Parade (the peristyle of the Church of St. Philip). It was noticed that those who spoke incautiously of the Queen in public were promptly denounced and brought to trouble, and the gossips soon pitched upon Valenzuela as the spy, calling him in consequence by the nickname, by which he was generally known, of the ‘fairy of the palace.’ The man was bold, ambitious, and unscrupulous, and soon more than occupied the place left vacant by Nithard.