To turn back to Castile now for a time, in the labyrinth of this much involved period, where the duplication of names and the multiplicity of places makes it difficult to thread one's way intelligently, it will be found that the court, during the reign of Henry IV., was chiefly distinguished by its scandalous immorality. Quintana, in his volume entitled the _Grandezas de Madrid_, gives enough information on the subject to reveal the fact that the roues of that period could learn little from their counterparts to-day, as the most shameless proceedings were of everyday occurrence, and men and women both seemed to vie with each other in their wickedness. It would be somewhat unjust to include the great body of the people in this vicious class, as the most conspicuous examples of human degradation and degeneracy were to be found at the court, but the fact remains that public ideas in regard to moral questions were very lax; the clergy was corrupt, and the moral tone of the whole country was deplorably low, as judged by the standards of to-day. Women deceived their husbands with much the same relish as Boccaccio depicts in his _Decameron_; passions were everywhere the moving forces, in the higher and lower classes as well, and nowhere was there to be seen the continence which comes from an intelligent self-control. In the midst of this carnival of vice and corruption, King Henry, the older brother of the Princess Isabella, was a most striking figure. He had been divorced from his first wife, Blanche of Aragon, on the ground of impotence, but had succeeded, in spite of this humiliation, in contracting another alliance, this time with the beautiful, but not overscrupulous, Juana of Portugal. Beltran de Cueva, a brilliant nobleman, was the favorite and influential person at the court at this time, and his gradual rise to favor had been due in no small measure to the protection of the new queen, who was Beltran's all but acknowledged mistress and took no pains to conceal the matter at any time. In fact, at a great tournament held near Madrid in 1461, soon after Juana's arrival at the court, Beltran posed as her preferred champion, and held the lists against all comers in defence of his mistress's preeminent and matchless beauty. The king was far from displeased at this liaison between Beltran and the queen, and he was so delighted at the knight's unvarying success in this tournament, that the story goes that he founded a monastery upon the spot and named it, in honor of Saint Jerome and Beltran, San Geronimo del Paso, or of the "passage of arms"! The king was little moved by all this, for the simple reason that he was paying a most ardent court at the same time to one of the queen's ladies in waiting. This Lady Guiomar, his mistress, was beautiful, but bold and vicious, as her relations with such a king demonstrate, but for a time at least she was riding upon the crest of the wave. Proud in her