Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/212

 The queen's levity might have sought some jus- tification in the unveiled licentiousness of her hus- band. One of the maids of honor, whom she brought in her train, acquired an ascendency over Henry, which he did not attempt to disguise ; and the palace, after the exhibition of the most dis- graceful scenes, became divided by the factions of the hostile fair ones. The archbishop of Seville did not blush to espouse the cause of the paramour, who maintained a magnificence of state, which ri- valled that of royalty itself. The public were still more scandalized by Henry's sacrilegious intrusion of another of his mistresses into the post of abbess of a convent in Toledo, after the expulsion of her predecessor, a lady of noble rank and irreproacha- ble character.

The Stream of corruption soon finds its way from the higher to the more humble walks of life. The middling classes, imitating their superiors, indulged in an excess of luxury equally demoralizing, and ruinous to their fortunes. The contagion of example infected even the higher ecclesiastics; and we find the archbishop of St. James hunted from his see by the indignant populace, in consequence of an out-