Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/92

66 66 ITALIAN WARS. II. PART y ceremonial of the Spanish court. The joung prince shared in these feelings, to which, indeed, the love of pleasure, and an instinctive aversion to any thing like serious occupation, naturally disposed him. Ferdinand and Isabella saw with regret the frivolous disposition of their son-in-law, who, in the indulgence of selfish and effeminate ease, was will- ing to repose on others all the important duties of government. They beheld with mortification his indifference to Joanna, who could boast few per- sonal attractions,^ and who cooled the affections of her husband by alternations of excessive fondness and irritable jealousy, for which last the levity of his conduct gave her too much occasion. Shortly after the ceremony at Saragossa, the archduke announced his intention of an immediate return to the Netherlands, by the way of France. The sovereigns, astonished at this abrupt determi- nation, used every argument to dissuade him from it. They represented the ill effects it might occa- sion the princess Joanna, then too far advanced in a state of pregnancy to accompany him. They pointed out the impropriety, as well as danger, of committing himself to the hands of the French king, with whom they were now at open war ; and they finally insisted on the importance of Philip's re- maining long enough in the kingdom to become familiar with the usages, and establish himself in the affections, of the people over whom he would one day be called to reign. 9 "Simplex est foemina," says a tanta muliere progenita." Opus Martyr, speaking of Joanna, " licet Epist., epist. 250.