a fortune that she thought she had an especial claim on his fidelity, became exceedingly jealous, and, being a _dague en jarretiere_ lady, as became one who was born to reign over Andalucia, killed her faithless husband,--not by stabbing him, but by giving him poison. This was in 1506, when husband and wife were but twenty-eight and twenty-four years old, and had been but ten years married. There were two sons and four daughters born of this marriage, all of whom made important marriages. The eldest son was the man whom Mr. Stirling calls "the greatest monarch of the memorable sixteenth century,"--Charles V., Emperor of Germany, and the Spanish Charles I. He founded the Spanish branch of the house of Austria, the elder branch.[28] He married Isabella of Portugal, and their son was Philip II., who added Portugal to the possessions of the Austrian family, and one of whose wives was Mary Tudor, queen of England, the Bloody Mary of fire-and-fagot memory; and Philip gladly would have placed Mary's sister Elizabeth in his half-vacant bed. The marriage of Philip and Mary was barren, and poor Mary's belief that a "blessed baby" was coming has been matter for laughter for more than three hundred years. Had her agonizing prayers for offspring been heard, what a change would have been wrought in human destinies, even had the child lived to be no older than Edward VI.! The second son of Philip the Fair and Juana was Ferdinand, named from his maternal grandfather, Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Argon. He was the founder of the German branch of the house of Austria, the younger branch, which has long survived the elder branch, though now it exists only in the female line, and really is the house of Lorraine. Ferdinand became Ferdinand I., Emperor of Germany, and he did far more than was done by his elder brother to keep up the character of his family for making much through marriage. In 1522, when but nineteen, he married Anne Yagellon, princess of Hungary and Bohemia,--a marriage that might not have proved very important, but that death came in and made it so, and also the births that came from it, as will presently appear. Charles and Ferdinand had four sisters, and they all four made great marriages, three of which were very useful to the Austrian house. The eldest of these ladies, Eleanora, was married to Emanuel, king of Portugal,--a man old enough to be her father, with some years to spare,--being sacrificed to the ambition of her brother Charles, for she was attached to the Count Palatine. Becoming a widow, she was compelled to give her hand to that popular rascal, Francis I. of France, when her brother wished to strengthen the treaty he made with his "good brother" at Madrid, and which the Frenchman had arranged to disregard even before he signed it. The second sister, Isabella, married Christian II., king of Denmark, when she was but fourteen, and died at twenty-four. Mary, the third