However, all animosity on that score ceased at the death of the beautiful and lovable Queen, who had had undisputed sway in the heart of her young husband, and whose intelligence and good feeling at the age of eighteen had promised so much good for the country. There were not lacking those who attributed the dreadful event to the enemies of the Montpensiers, but others said it was due to a chill. During the sufferings of the last few hours the young husband sat in sorrow by the bedside, and the much-loved wife strove between her attacks of pain to comfort him with the hope of meeting in a future world. At last all was over, and the poor young Queen was laid out in state on a low couch in the stately Hall of Columns. This Hall of Columns was often used for state banquets, but, after being the scene of the last sad functions in honour of his beloved wife, Alfonso had a new banqueting-hall built, and the salon of such sad memories has never since been used for any but solemn ceremonies, such as the washing the feet and feeding the beggars by royalty on Maunday Thursday, the Chapter of one of the grand military Orders, etc. The corpse of the young Queen was dressed in the white garb and black cape of a nun of the Convent of Don Juan de Alarcon; the lower part of her face was covered with a white gauze handkerchief; her beautiful white hands, which looked like wax, were crossed on her bosom; and her face, which had been so admired a few short weeks before--when, according to the custom of Spain, she passed through the streets on foot on Holy Thursday, to make her visits to the churches in company with her husband and the Court--looked drawn with pain and fever as it lay in the light of countless candles. The public defiled sadly through the mortuary chapel, and many were the Masses celebrated by the Church dignitaries on the altar erected at the end of the hall. On the day of the funeral the royal cortège solemnly passed down the soldier-lined streets to the station. The sound of the horses’ hoofs was deadened by the tan with which the roads were strewn, and the silence was only broken by the piercing note of an occasional clarion or the dull tattoo of the muffled drums. Grandees, Gentlemen-in-Waiting, mace-bearers, and officers, all with crape badges, preceded the catafalque, before which was borne the standard of the Sisterhood of the Royal House, followed by the cross and the clerics in their vestments. Finally came the band of the halberdiers, whose soblike strains of a funeral march was in tune with the occasion. At last, for the first time in history, the remains of a Queen were placed on a railway-train for the Escorial, and so the coffin of Mercedes left the station amid the booming of the cannon and the strains of the Royal March played for the last time in her honour.