The Court of Philip II was certainly the strictest of its day, but it was also the most magnificent, sumptuous and full of harmless amusement and the knight errantry of those times, without lacking, as was natural, intrigues, plots and scandals between gallants and ladies. These D. Philip sometimes put down openly with a firm hand, at others corrected secretly, and not a few he pretended not to notice, for reasons which must always remain unknown. The Court was divided, as nearly always happens, into two absolutely different camps—the courtly and the political. The principal personages of the former at that time were two princesses, as remarkable for their virtue as for their beauty, and united by the bonds of the tenderest friendship. They were the Queen Isabel de Valois and the widowed Princess of Portugal, Doña Juana, the first aged only twenty and the other thirty at this date. Their circle included the numerous ladies of both their suites, belonging to the highest Spanish nobility, although the Queen's included a few Frenchwomen and the Princess's several Portuguese, and these foreigners were always at war with the Spanish women. The Queen's ladies numbered over fifty, all spinsters, and they only remained at the palace until the King had found advantageous alliances for them. There were also ten duennas of honour, all widows and ladies of high rank, and at their head the Camarera Mayor, who had to be a lady of quality, and was, at that time, the Dowager Condesa de Urena, Doña Maria de la Cueva, a matron of great judgment and experience and the mother of the first Duque de Osuna. [Illustration: _Photo Anderson_ ELIZABETH DE VALOIS. ISABEL DE LA PAZ, THIRD WIFE OF PHILIP II _From her picture by Pantoja de La Cruz in Prado Gallery, Madrid_ ] Princess Juana also had her ladies, her very respectable duennas, and her Camarera Mayor, Doña Isabel de Quiñones. Doña Elenor Mascarenas, her former and beloved and revered governess, had already retired from the Court, and was then founding, in what is to-day the square of Santo Domingo, the convent of the Angels, where, years afterwards, she ended her holy life. It pleased the Queen to amuse her ladies with riding, hunting, picnics in the groves, balls, masquerades and theatricals in her apartments, in which they all, including the Queen, took part, and where they also played, at times so high, that in one night Prince Carlos, at a game called "el clavo," lost 100 golden crowns, according to the declaration of his barber Ruy Diaz de Quitanilla, who had lent them to the Prince. To these entertainments the Queen was in the habit of inviting also all the great ladies who had no places at Court, but who lived in Madrid, or those who were only passing through, particularly the Princess of Évoli, of whom she was always a great friend, and the Duquesa de Alba, Doña Maria Enríquez, who was afterwards her Camarera Mayor, and at all times deserved the greatest affection and respect.