Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/25

 HE year was 1638. The season was the dawn of that Portuguese winter that is gay with flowers. It was St. Catherine's Day—November 25, and it was dark evening. Eight o'clock had long sounded from the bells of the churches and the clocks of the palace. Nine was not yet due, when a joyful murmur and stirr thrilled through the ducal palace of Villa Vi90sa. Donna Luiza, wife of the Duke of Bragan9a and daughter of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had been in her pains all day. Now she had given birth to a daughter.

It was the girl-child who was fated to a destiny so varied, and to a life so chequered that the mother who bore her could never have forecast it. She was to be in future times Catherine the Humiliated, the wronged, the disdained. But no shadow of the days before her lay on the ducal cradle where they placed her. She was hailed with warm welcomes—the first daughter after two sons. The palace rang with happy congratulations. To her parents, in their love-marriage, she came as its crown and its completion.

It was in troubled times that she opened her eyes to the light. Portugal was on the very eve of a revolution. It was partly to withdraw himself from