additional clothing, but remained cold and shivering on the spot till the
following morning. The good bishop, sorely embarrassed by the dilemma to
which he found himself reduced, of offending the queen by complying with
the mad humor of the princess, or the latter still more, by resisting it,
despatched an express in all haste to Isabella, acquainting her with the
affair, and begging instructions how to proceed.

The queen, who was staying, as has been said, at Segovia, about forty
miles distant, alarmed at the intelligence, sent the king's cousin, the
admiral Henriquez, together with the archbishop of Toledo, at once to
Medina, and prepared to follow as fast as the feeble state of her health
would permit. The efforts of these eminent persons, however, were not much
more successful than those of the bishop. All they could obtain from
Joanna was, that she would retire to a miserable kitchen in the
neighborhood, during the night; while she persisted in taking her station
on the barrier as soon as it was light, and continued there, immovable as
a statue, the whole day. In this deplorable state she was found by the
queen on her arrival; and it was not without great difficulty that the
latter, with all the deference habitually paid her by her daughter,
succeeded in persuading her to return to her own apartments in the castle.
These were the first unequivocal symptoms of that hereditary taint of
insanity which had clouded the latter days of Isabella's mother, and
which, with a few brief intervals, was to shed a deeper gloom over the
long-protracted existence of her unfortunate daughter. [13]

The conviction of this sad infirmity of the princess gave a shock to the
unhappy mother, scarcely less than that which she had formerly been called
to endure in the death of her children. The sorrows, over which time had
had so little power, were opened afresh by a calamity, which naturally
filled her with the most gloomy forebodings for the fate of her people,