[Footnote 46: _Voyage en Angleterre_, 1770.]
What fairy and fugitive princess can this be, whom not in vain the
ardent Hebrew wooed? She was, she must have been, as Grosley saw, the
heroine of Victor Hugo's _Ruy Blas_. The unhappy Charles II. of Spain,
a kind of 'mammet' (as the English called the Richard II. who appeared
up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had for his first
wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favourite sister of our Charles II.
This childless bride, after some ghostly years of matrimony, after
being exorcised in disgusting circumstances, died in February 1689. In
May 1690 a new bride, Marie de Neubourg, was brought to the grisly
side of the crowned mammet of Spain. She, too, failed to prevent the
wars of the Spanish Succession by giving an heir to the Crown of
Spain. Scandalous chronicles aver that Marie was chosen as Queen of
Spain for the levity of her character, and that the Crown was
expected, as in the Pictish monarchy, to descend on the female side;
the father of the prince might be anybody. What was needed was simply
a son of the _Queen_ of Spain. She had, while Queen, no son, as far as
is ascertained, but she had a favourite, a Count Andanero, whom she
made minister of finance.
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320