Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/168

24 24 REIGN OF JOHN II., OF CASTILE. PART Luna had been gradually infusing itself into the royal bosom. His too obvious assumption of su- periority, even over the monarch who had raised him from the dust, was probably the real though secret cause of this disgust. But the habitual ascendency of the favorite over his master, pre- vented the latter from disclosing this feeling until it was heightened by an occurrence, which sets in a strong light the imbecility of the one and the presumption of the other. John, on the death of his wife, Maria of Aragon, had formed the design of connecting himself with a daughter of the king of France. But the constable, in the mean time, without even the privity of his master, entered into negotiations for his marriage with the princess Isabella, granddaughter of John the First of Portugal ; and the monarch, with an unprece- dented degree of complaisance, acquiesced in an arrangement professedly repugnant to his own in- clinations.^''^ By one of those dispensations of Providence, however, which often confound the plans of the wisest, as of the weakest, the column, which the minister had so artfully raised for his support, served only to crush him. The new queen, disgusted with his haughty bearing, and probably not much gratified with the subordinate situation to which he had reduced her His fall, husband, entered heartily into the feelings of the latter, and indeed contrived to extinguish whatever 37 Cr6nica de Juan II., p. 490. fruesa, (1679,) torn. ii. pp. 335. ■ — Faria y Sousa, Europa Portu- 372.