order it was this temperament that made him live thus brilliantly, yet chaste; energetic, just and rigorously loyal. Supernaturally, it taught him to disregard, gradually, the personal element in rebuffs or injuries; to exalt his Emperor-worship to a loftier plane where in all daily life the Divine Majesty was worshipped; to chastise the body which still had its revolts; and to correct the imagination, thought, and will till a true perspective should have become habitual; and in each next step of life to look for the Providence which should ordain it.

And this interior life was strongly fostered by his associates. All his years Francis Borgia seems to have had to do with Saints, and men whose business was as much the Christian life as court life, and the welfare of his province or estates, were his own. The Poor Clares haunted his childhood, and their prayers and even counsel follow all his goings. Blessed John of Avila had preached at the Empress's funeral and had talked with him before he left for Catalonia. At Barcelona, a Franciscan lay-brother, Juan de Texeda, a man of stormy background, lived in great sanctity. The Viceroy heard of him, saw much of him, forwarded his rather startling plea for ordination, and obtained papal leave to carry him off to Gandia, where he lived in the Duke's palace.

He certainly stimulated the mystical and penitential side of Borgia. In 1539 Antonio Araoz, a Jesuit of one year's standing, and not yet priested, arrived at Barcelona. This first Jesuit to set foot in Spain took by storm a town right willing to be stormed, remembering as it did the sojourn of Ignatius, fifteen years ago, within it. Borgia made inquiries, and was struck by the good the Society might do in helping on the work of reform. Peter Faber passed there too, in 1541 and 1542. Later, Araoz returned, and when Ignatius recalled him to Rome, Borgia pleaded, almost indignantly, that he might be left to continue his revival-work. Araoz had to leave; but Borgia was, henceforward, in frequent correspondence with the General of the Jesuits.

III.

THE DUKE OF GANDIA

"A Dream cometh through the multitude of the Business."-ECCL. v. 3.

HARDLY was Borgia established at Gandia when a thunderbolt struck his fortunes. King John of Portugal and his wife Queen Catherine, to whom the Duke had been page at Tordesillas, refused point-blank to admit him or his wife to their daughter's court in any position whatsoever. Why? Because Charles had appointed the Gandias without consulting John and Catherine? Such was the alleged explanation. More probably, however, the King and Queen each bore a grudge, to the Duchess and the Duke respectively. Catherine remembered that the old Duke had refused to allow Francis to come with her to Portugal when she wanted him. At last she could slap back. John on his side knew that the Duchess had been a friend of the Cardinal of Vise, Miguel de Silva. Now Silva had been disgraced for asserting that John was illegitimate, his father Emmanuel

having married his sister-in-law, Maria of Aragon, without dispensation. The Gandias wrote in much alarm, apologizing, protesting, explaining; after all, they were but obeying orders. They received new snubs, sometimes polite, sometimes insolent.

MAGNIFICENT

MOST HONOURABLE AND DUCHESS, MY NIECE [wrote Catherine to Eleanora].-I, Doña Catherine, by the grace of God Queen of Portugal [a string of other pompous titles to domination follows], in Africa, Mistress of Guinea and the coast, of navigation and trade in Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India, Infanta of Germany, Castille, Léon and Aragon, of the Two Sicilies and of Jerusalem, I cause you to be saluted as my well-beloved. I have seen the letter you have written to me; and my brother, the Infant, has told me all you have written to him; and since there is no answer and the Infant will tell you and inform you of all that I think, I refer you to him.

Written at Cintra, Aug. 30, 1543.

THE QUEEN.

The Infant, Don Luis, for his part, wrote that if the Duchess thought to force her way into the royal household sword in hand, she was

gravely mistaken. The Duke and Duchess wrote indignantly to the Emperor. The slight put on them was intolerable. Deeply offended and hurt, they preferred to stay away from court altogether. This Charles permitted. They decided to wait a year, Francis observing with annoyance his dwindling income,* and writing constantly to Charles to save his honour. Charles was away fighting, and nothing happened.†

Borgia occupied himself by fortifying Gandia, improving his sugar-cane plantations (which brought in much of the Gandia revenue), and

* His behaviour was in keeping with the times, though to us it seems singular. Military, political and ecclesiastical posts, with large salaries, were given to noblemen who then placed in them ill-paid and inefficient lieutenants. The Duke and Duchess eagerly solicited the government of the very important town Jativa for their son Juan, promising to find a Lieutenant "with whom God and His

Majesty should be satisfied." Juan was eleven years

old.

†The whole of this episode is omitted or glozed by the Saint's official biographers, partly because to narrate it would have offended too many living personages, and partly because it seemed too worldly an event to assign as true cause of the Duke's change of outlook. It was, however, the decisive moment of his life, though he did not even yet realize for some time that a worldly career was over, now, for