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“Speak, pretty maid, unto me in Spanish; for I understand it well, and shall take much pleasure therein.”

And turning herself towards Clotaldo, she said unto him:

“Clotaldo, you have done Us wrong in keeping this treasure so long concealed from Us; but it is such and so rich that it hath moved you to covetousness. You are bound to restore it unto Us, for by right it is Ours, and properly belongeth unto Us.”

“Madam,” answered Clotaldo, “it is true which your Majesty saith. I confess my fault, if it be a fault to have kept this treasure, that it might be preserved in that perfection as was fitting to appear in your Majesty’s presence. And now that it is here before your eye, I thought to have much improved it by craving your Majesty’s leave that Isabella might be the spouse of my son Ricaredo, and to give your most excellent Majesty in these two all that I am able to give you.”

“Her very name gives Us very good content,” replied the Queen; “there could nothing have been more wanting save the name of Isabella the Spaniard to take off something from that perfection which is in her. But how is it, Clotaldo, that without Our leave you have promised her to your son?”

“It is true, madam,” answered Clotaldo, “I have made him a promise of her, but it was upon the confidence that the many and noble services which myself and my ancestors have done this crown might obtain of your Majesty other more difficult favours than this of your leave, and the rather for that my son is not yet espoused unto her.”

“Neither shall he,” said the Queen, “marry Isabella till he by himself and in his own person shall deserve her. Our meaning is, that I will not that either your own or your ancestors’ services shall any whit benefit him in this particular, but that he in his own person shall dispose himself to serve me, and to merit for himself, and by his own prowess, this sweet pledge, whom We esteem and reckon of as if she were Our own daughter.”

Isabella had scarce heard this last word delivered when, humbling herself again on her knees before the Queen, she spake unto her in the Spanish tongue, to this effect:

“Disgraces, which bring such graces with them, most noble Queen, are rather to be accounted happiness than misfortunes; and since that your Majesty hath been pleased to grace me with the name of daughter upon so good a pledge, what ill can I fear, or what good may I not hope for?”

Lo, what Isabella uttered came from her so gracefully and so wittingly that the Queen stood extremely affected towards her, and commanded that she should remain at Court in her service, and recommended her to a great lady, the chiefest amongst those of her bedchamber, that she might train her up according to the Court fashion.

Ricaredo, who saw that his life was taken away in taking away Isabella, was ready almost to have lost his wits; and therefore, though overtaken with a tumbling and sudden passion of heart, he went and fell upon his knees before the Queen, and said unto her: “That I may serve your Majesty, I need not to be incited thereunto by any other rewards than by those which my forefathers and ancestors have gotten by serving their kings; but since that it is your Majesty’s pleasure that I should serve you with good desires and pretensions, I would gladly know in what kind and in what employment I may manifest that I comply with that obligation which I owe unto your Majesty, and put myself to that which you shall impose upon me.”