Note 975 — Chapter X

The monotony of life and the tyranny of Spanish etiquette must have borne hard upon the little queen of Spain. But in the midst of the miseries of this “royal slavery,” as M. le comte de la Ferrière calls it, it was a crowning humiliation to be condemned to be the instrument of Philip’s political intrigues. That her young spirit rebelled, though hopelessly, against the situationis evident, from a pitiful letter written by her to her brother’s ambassador in Spain (La Ferrière, Rapport, 28).