Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/199

173 HER CHARACTER. 173 the liveliest concern.^ She received with pleasure, chapter XVI. too, such intelligent travellers, as her renown had attracted to the Castilian court. She drew forth their stores of various information, and dismissed them, says a writer of the age, penetrated with the deepest admiration of that masculine strength of mind, which sustained her so nobly under the weight of a mortal malady/ This malady was now rapidly gaining ground. On the 15th of October we have another epistle of Martyr, of the following melancholy tenor. " You ask me respecting the state of the queen's health. We sit sorrowful in the palace all day long, trem- blingly waiting the hour, when relijjion and virtue shall quit the earth with her. Let us pray that we may be permitted to follow hereafter where she is soon to go. She so far transcends all human excel- lence, that there is scarcely any thing of mortality about her. She can hardly be said to die, but to pass into a nobler existence, which should rather excite our envy than our sorrow. She leaves the world filled with her renown, and she goes to enjoy 5 A short time before her death, to the queen at tliis time, was a she received a visit from the distin- celebrated Venetian traveller, nam- guished officer, Prospero Colonna. ed Vianelli, who presented her with The Italian noble, on being- pre- a cross of pure gold set with pre- sented to King Ferdinand, told him, cious stones, among which was that " he had come to Castile to a carbuncle of inestimable value, behold the woman, who from her The liberal Italian met with rather sick bed ruled the world ; " " ver an uncourtly rebuke fromXimenes, una seiiora que desde la cama who told him, on leaving the pres- mandava al mundo." Sandoval, ence, that " he had rather have Hist, del Emp. Carlos V., tom. i. the money his diamonds cost, to p. 8. — Carta de Gonzalo, MS. spend in the service of the church, 6 Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, than all the gems of the Indies." fol. 47. Ibid. Among the foreigners introduced