Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/121

95 INVASION OF SPAIN. 95 intelligence, sent the king's cousin, the admiral chapter 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 neighbourhood, 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 symp- toms 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. ^^ The conviction of this sad infirmity of the prin- Isabella's cess 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 sor- rows, 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 13 Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., Hernando, torn. i. lib. 5, cap. 56. epist. 268. — Zurita, Hist, del Roy Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 46.
 * ' '■ distress.