His
wife, Elizabeth Farnese, lies under the same gravestone with him, as if
unwilling to forego even in death that tremendous influence which her
vigorous vitality had always exercised over his wavering and sensual
nature. "Das Ewig-Weibliche" masters and guides him still.
This retreat in the autumn of 1832 was the scene of a prodigious
exhibition of courage and energy on the part of another Italian woman,
Dona Louisa Carlota de Borbon. Ferdinand VIL, his mind weakened by
illness, and influenced by his ministers, had proclaimed his brother Don
Carlos heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own infant daughter.
His wife, Queen Christine, broken down by the long conflict, had given
way in despair. But her sister, Dona Louisa Carlota, heard of the news
in the south of Spain, and, leaving her babies at _Cadiz_ (two little
urchins, one of whom was to be king consort, and the other was to fall
by his cousin Montpensier's hand in the field of Carabanchel), she
posted without a moment's pause for rest or sleep over mountains and
plains from the sea to La Granja. She fought with the lackeys and the
ministers twenty-four hours before she could see her sister the queen.
Having breathed into Christine her own invincible spirit, they
succeeded, after endless pains, in reaching the king. Obstinate as the
weak often are, he refused at first to listen to them; but by their
womanly wiles, their Italian policy, their magnetic force, they at last
brought him to revoke his decree in favor of Don Carlos and to recognize
the right of his daughter to the crown.
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