Charles was seventeen years of age, and already his country was speculating eagerly upon his marriage; whilst his degeneracy and weakness aroused hopes and fears of what might happen if he died without issue. According to the will of Philip IV., the succession fell to the Empress Margaret, daughter of Mariana; but the French King, who from the first had made light of his wife’s renunciation of her Spanish birthright, and Maria Theresa herself, were not inclined to let her claims go by default. Soon the gossips in Madrid began to whisper that a French Queen Consort, a descendant of the house which had given them their beloved Isabel of Bourbon, would suit Spain best, and Don Juan himself was not unwilling to listen to such a suggestion; for, in any case, the King must marry, and a French match would be a blow against Mariana and the Austrian connection. The Duke of Medina Celi, Don Juan’s principal henchman, slept, as sumiller de corps, in the King’s room; and it was he who first broached to Charles the idea of a French wife. He was, the Duke reminded him, a grown man now, and the Austrian Archduchess of ten was too young for him. The Princess of Portugal, he said, would never be consented to by the French, and she was also too youthful: but there was at St. Cloud the most lovely Princess ever seen, only a year younger than himself, who was a bride for the greatest king in the world.[278] Her name was Marie Louise, and she was the daughter of the brother of King Louis, the Duke of Orleans, by Henriette of England, that beautiful daughter of Charles I. who had been so beloved in the country of her adoption. Maria Theresa took care that miniatures of her lovely niece should go to the Spanish Court, and when one of them was brought to the notice of the young King, his adolescent passion was inflamed at once, and the Marquis de los Balbeses, who had represented Spain at the conference of Nimeguen, was instructed by Don Juan to proceed to Paris and ask King Louis for the hand of his niece. Marie Louise was a spoilt beauty of the most refined and gayest court in Europe. She had when a child lost her English mother; but every body was in love with her, from King Louis downward; and it had long been understood that she might marry the Dauphin, with whom she was on the tenderest terms of affection. But the treaties of Nimeguen had transformed the face of Europe, and Louis had other views for his son, whilst the need for securing a footing in Spain during the critical period approaching was evident. So, when Balbeses came to Paris with unusual state, and Saint Germain and Saint Cloud were a blaze of magnificence to receive him, the girl’s heart sank; for with her precocious intelligence she guessed the meaning of the whispers and curious glances that greeted her every appearance in the ceremonies in honour of the King of Spain’s ambassador.