She bore herself throughout the trying ceremonies with a composure and grace which she knew were fitting for the Queen of Spain; and as she glided, holding her handsome father’s hand, along the gorgeous raised and covered gangway leading from the bishop’s palace to the great door of Notre Dame, she presented a vision of beauty adorned with such stately magnificence as can rarely have been surpassed, even at the marriage of her friend and sister-in-law, Mary Stuart, in the same place shortly before. The texture of Isabel’s robe was literally interwoven with pearls. Round her neck was suspended Philip’s portrait, and the great pear-shaped pearl which was the greatest treasure in the crown jewels of Spain. Her mantle was of blue velvet, enriched with a border of bullion embroidery a foot wide. The train of this gorgeous robe was borne by her sister Claude, Duchess of Lorraine, and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and, as she foolishly called herself, Queen of England. Isabel wore an imperial crown which, we are told, cast a halo of light around her as she walked, so refulgent were the jewels of which it was composed.[168] Alba, in cloth of gold and with the royal insignia, personated his absent master, and in his name was married to the Princess by Cardinal de Bourbon. Splendour truly seems to have excelled itself in that sumptuous court on this occasion; the long-standing enemies, France and Spain, each trying to outdazzle the other in its lavish magnificence.
But scowling faces there were not a few, for this was the triumph of the house of Lorraine, and the debonair Duke of Guise and his brothers took no pains to hide their elation, whilst the princes of the blood of the house of Bourbon, the Montmorencis and the reformers were full of foreboding, for they knew now that their enemies could look across the Pyrenees, almost certain of aid from the most powerful potentate on earth. Queen Catharine, too, clerical though she was, smiled with a bitter heart, for she had no love for the house of Guise. For days the festivities went on: masque and banquet, ball and tournament following each other with wearisome brilliancy, for another daughter of France, Margaret, was wedded at the same time to the Duke of Savoy, and the double nuptials called for double display.