But it was soon whispered that she was a wife only in name.

She died; and her place was supplied by a German princess nearly allied to the Imperial House.

But the second marriage, like the first, proved barren; and, long before the King had passed the prime of life, all the politicians of Europe had begun to take it for granted in all their calculations that he would be the last descendant, in the male line, of Charles the Fifth.

Meanwhile a sullen and abject melancholy took possession of his soul.

The diversions which had been the serious employment of his youth became distasteful to him.