The King of Spain by Oscar Wilde — Read

From a window in the palace the sad melancholy King watched them. Behind / him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated, and his / confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his side. Sadder even / than usual was the King, for as he looked at the Infanta bowing with / childish gravity to the assembling counters, or laughing behind her fan / at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who always accompanied her, he thought / of the young Queen, her mother, who but a short time before -- so it seemed / to him -- had come from the gay country of France, and had withered away in / the sombre splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after / the birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom twice / in the orchard, or plucked the second year's fruit from the old gnarled / fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-grown courtyard. So / great had been his love for her that he had not suffered even the grave / to hide her from him. She had been embalmed by a Moorish physician, who / in return for this service had been granted his life, which for heresy / and suspicion of magical practices had been already forfeited, men said, / to the Holy Office, and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier / in the black marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her / in on that windy March day nearly twelve years before. Once every month / the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his hand, / went in and knelt by her side calling out, '_Mi reina_! _Mi reina_! ' and / sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in Spain governs / every separate action of life, and sets limits even to the sorrow of a / King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands in a wild agony of / grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the cold painted face.

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the Castle / of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and she still / younger. They had been formally betrothed on that occasion by the Papal / Nuncio in the presence of the French King and all the Court, and he had / returned to the Escurial bearing with him a little ringlet of yellow / hair, and the memory of two childish lips bending down to kiss his hand / as he stepped into his carriage. Later on had followed the marriage, / hastily performed at Burgos, a small town on the frontier between the two / countries, and the grand public entry into Madrid with the customary / celebration of high mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than / usually solemn _auto-da-fe_, in which nearly three hundred heretics, / amongst whom were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular / arm to be burned.