There was some eager talk of the Queen’s pregnancy before the grand State entry into Madrid; but when that hope disappeared, and Marie Louise began to languish alarmingly in the dull incarceration of the Retiro, she and her husband sufficiently relaxed their surroundings to go to the hunting palace of the Pardo, six miles away, where the young Queen could ride her French horses, and Charles could enjoy himself with a little pigsticking. At length the great day for the public entry into the capital came on the 13th January 1680. Madrid, as usual, had squandered money sorely needed for bread in gaudy shows. At every street corner arose monuments and arches of imitation marble; and all the heathen mythology was ransacked for far-fetched compliments to the people’s new idol. The King and his mother leaving the Retiro in the morning took up a position in the central balcony of the Oñate palace, still standing, in the Calle Mayor; and at noon Marie Louise on a beautiful chestnut palfrey issued from the gates of the Buen Retiro, where the aldermen of the town stood awaiting her with the canopy of state, under which she was to ride to the palace. Preceded by trumpeters and the knights of the royal orders, by her household and by the grandees of Spain, all in garments of dazzling magnificence, rode the most beautiful woman in Spain, gorgeously dressed in garments so richly embroidered with gold that their colour was hidden, and covered with precious stones, but withal, as a Spanish eyewitness observes, ‘more beautifully adorned by her loveliness and grace than by the rich habit that she wore.’ Her horse was led by the Marquis of Villamayna, her chief equerry; and after her came a great train of ladies led by the Duchess of Terranova, all mounted on draped led mules. As the new Queen passed the Oñate palace she smiled and bowed low to the King and his mother, who could be dimly seen behind the nearly closed jalousies; and went triumphantly forward, conquering all hearts by the power of her radiant beauty.[302] But though she, poor soul, knew it not, more was needed than careless beauty to win the battle in which she was engaged, a battle not of hearts but of subtle crafty brains. Bullfights, with grandees as toreros, masquerades, cane tourneys, and the inevitable religious pageantry, at all of which Marie Louise, glittering with gems, took her place, ran their usual course; and at the end of a week after the entry the Queen began her regular married life in the old Alcazar on the cliff, more gloomy and monotonous, even, than the Retiro, in its gardens on the other side of the capital.