Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/202

58 58 REIGN OF JOHN II., OF ARAGON. PART him, and her loss at this crisis seemed to leave him at once without solace or support.^^ At this period, he was further embarrassed, as will appear in the ensuing chapter, by negotiations for Ferdinand's marriage, which was to deprive him, in a great measure, of his son's cooperation in the struggle with his subjects, and which, as he la- mented, while he had scarcely three hundred enri- ques in his coffers, called on him for additional dis- bursements. J^mTiT As the darkest hour, however, is commonly said John's af- 1 i i ■ i • i i feirs. to precede the dawning, so light now seemed to break upon the affairs of John. A physician in Lerida of the Hebrew race, which monopolized at that time almost all the medical science in Spain, persuaded the king to submit to the then unusual operation of couching, and succeeded in restoring sight to one of his eyes. As the Jew, after the fashion of the Arabs, debased his real science with astrology, he refused to operate on the other eye, since the planets, he said, wore a malignant aspect. But John's rugged nature was insensible to the timorous superstitions of his age, and he compelled the physician to repeat his experiment, which in the end proved perfectly successful. Thus restored to his natural faculties, the octogenarian chief, for such 48 Alonso dc Palencia. Cor6nica, was heard several times, in her last MS., part. 2, cap. 88. — L. Ma- illness, to exclaim, in allnsion, as rineo, Cosas Memoral)lcs, fol. 143. was supposed, to her assassination Aleson, Anales dc Navarra, torn, of Carlos, "Alas! Ferdinand, how iv. p. 609. — The queen's death dear thou hast cost thy mother!" was said to have heen caused by a I find no notice of this improhablu cancer. Accordinjr to Aleson and confession in any conlemporary some other Spanish writers, Joan author.