CHAPTER XVIII

The author of the "History of the Reforms of the Barefooted Order of Our Lady of Carmel," Fr. Francisco de Santamaria, thus describes the arrival of the Princess de évoli at the convent of Pastrana. "The Prioress called the nuns, got ready the house, and prepared two beds, one for the Princess, the other for her mother, who arrived at eight o'clock in the morning. The Princess changed her habit, as the one she had taken in Madrid was neither suitable nor so clean as it might have been. She rested for a while, and suddenly showing her determination wished that the habit should be given at once to the two waiting-maids she had brought with her, paying with a little sackcloth the salaries of long years. The Prioress answered that the licence of the prelate was necessary. She said, very much offended, 'What have friars to do with my convent?' Not without resentment on the Princess's part, the Mother Prioress deferred doing it until she had consulted the Father Prior. Having conferred with him she resolved to give them the habit. This was done in the parlour, the Princess being placed between the two, so that she might also attain the blessings. They took her to eat meat with her mother in a room apart. She dispensed with this service and went to the refectory, and leaving the place near the Prioress which had been prepared for her took one of the lowest, without giving in to prayers and exhortations, preserving superiority in an inferior place.

"The Prioress, considering that such self-will would cause much trouble, consulted with the Princess, her mother, that it would be better if the lady took a part of the house, where she could live with her servants and be visited by secular people, with a door to go to the cloister when she wished, but not any secular person to use it. This seemed to everyone good advice, but she thought it bad, as it was not hers, and she remained as she was in the convent.

PRINCESA DE éVOLI

From a print of her portrait by Sanchez Coello,
belonging to Duque du Pastrana

"The next day, having buried the Prince and performed the obsequies, the Bishop of Segorbe and other persons of rank who were there came to visit her. Mother Elizabeth told her to talk to them at the grating, but she wished that they should come into the cloister, and made such a point of this that, in spite of the monks, nuns, and laymen who came to visit her, they opened the doors of the convent and many servants entered with the lords, overthrowing the decrees of the Council, the orders of the holy Mother, the silence and retirement of the nuns and all good government, because lords do not think that they need obey laws. Not content with this she insisted on having two secular maids; the Mother Prioress offered that she herself and everyone would wait on her, especially two novices formerly in her service, but nothing would satisfy her, as she thought that she should be obeyed.

"The Mother Elizabeth wrote to our Mother St. Theresa, telling her of the death of the Prince, the resolution of the Princess, and the first episodes she had gone through with her.

"Mother Elizabeth and two of the oldest nuns told her that if she went on in this way, they knew that the holy foundation would take them away and put them where they could keep their rules, of more importance in her eyes than all the Grandees in the world. Annoyed by this, she took her servants and went to a hermitage in the orchard, and remained there, having nothing to do with the nuns. They sent her, however, the novices to wait on her, they not being yet so bound by the rules of the cloister.

"From there a door opened into the street, by which she admitted everyone, modifying thereby the grief for her husband's death. Because of all this the work of the church and convent stopped and the alms which Ruy Gómez had left for its support, so that it began to suffer great straits."

But as all this lasted too long, and since the Princess would not give in and the troubles went on, so that all peace and quiet were at an end, and the "dovecot of the Virgin," as St. Theresa called it, was turned into a nest of intrigues and gossip, the saint wrote to the Prioress that she and all the nuns were to leave Pastrana and go to the convent in Segovia. This, however, was not necessary, as the superiors of the Order went to the King, and, acting with him, obliged the Princess to leave the convent. She then retired to her country house at Pastrana, and from there carried on such a campaign against the nuns and persecuted them so cruelly that Theresa, weary of it, ordered the Prioress to leave the convent with all the nuns, taking nothing with them that had been given by the Princess. "The beds," says the saint in her "Book of Foundations," "and the little things that the nuns themselves had brought, they took away with them, leaving the village people very sad. I saw them in peace with the greatest joy, because I was well informed that the displeasure of the Princess was no fault of theirs, rather they waited on her as before she wore the habit."

The Princess then sought for a Franciscan community to establish in the empty convent, and she helped and made much of them as she had never done before to the others. She took care that this should reach the ears of St. Theresa, her small, vindictive nature thinking that human jealousies could have a place in that heart which was protected by divine love. In the midst of this wretched strife the grief of the Princess had lessened, and in 1575 she already thought of returning to Madrid, so her father the Prince de Mélito wrote to the King's secretary Mateo Vázguez, that he might inform Philip and gain his support in her lawsuits. According to his custom, the King answered on the margin of Mateo Vázguez's letter, in these very severe words: "Here is the paper, which I have seen, and by the prudence, which I have exercised all my life, of not mixing myself in the affairs of these persons, it will be well to do what is said here; and the more as I do not know if for these affairs and lawsuits the coming (of the Princess) is necessary, but I am certain that for their conscience and peace, and, who knows, their honour, it is best that she should not come here; and even for keeping the friendship of her father and mother, as she herself says, that when absent they are friends, but cannot be so when they are together. And Ruy Gómez often told me, and well I know that it was much against his will that she should come here as a widow, and that he would be sorry if he knew that she did it; and it is not reasonable that I should order a thing I know to have been so certainly against his wishes. And, moreover, I do not know if this would suit all of us of the Court, especially those who cannot leave it. Thus, although I should have to mix in such matters, I will not in this one, particularly as I have long since determined not to do so. Otherwise I should be pleased to favour Ruy Gómez's relations, as his services deserve. This for yourself, as it cannot be said to others. And you must see how you can answer Mélito, excusing me from interfering about his daughter's coming."

The precise date of the Princess de évoli's arrival in Madrid is not known; we think that she came for short and frequent visits in 1575 and settled there the next year. She would then realise that it was not the same thing to be the widow as the wife of Ruy Gómez, and many rude awakenings soured her proud spirit. The secretary Antonio Pérez began to frequent her house at this time, and these two monsters of vanity were attracted by, and suited to, each other. He, a political puppet, sought from her the prestige that intimacy with such a great and high-born lady as the Princess could give him, for, in spite of all his grandeur and luxury and power, then at its height, he never could forget his base and lowly origin. She, on her part, sought in him what she had lost by the death of Ruy Gómez, a share of power and influence, easier to manage from the hands of the unworthy Antonio Pérez than from those of the level-headed Prince de évoli: "I can do more than ever," said the Princess proudly a little later to one of her correspondents.

The lady was at this time thirty-six, and in spite of the superlative praise of her beauty that Antonio Pérez gives in his "Relaciones," it was not then extraordinary, nor ever could have been so. None of her contemporaries mention it, and the only authentic portrait known of her represents her as a nice-looking girl, dreadfully disfigured by a black patch which covered her blind eye, and specially noticeable from the whiteness of her skin and the blackness of her hair. Antonio Pérez was forty-two, and was, according to Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, "a good-looking man, with a handsome, manly face, over sumptuously and curiously dressed, perfumed, and pompous in his house." The inevitable happened: the sudden intimacy of two people, so well known, after years of slight acquaintance, caused them to be talked about, and the frequency and familiarity of the visits at unsuitable hours, and, above all, the endless exchange of presents, until mine and thine hardly existed between them, let loose among all the Court that gossip which previously had only been timidly circulated, as the Marqúes de Fabara had whispered to D. John. Then, in the presence of Antonio Pérez, she committed the treacherous act of a plotting woman; she called her children and told them not to be astonished at his visits or the affection he showed for them, because he was the son of Ruy Gómez and therefore their brother.

At this historical moment Escovedo arrived from Flanders (July, 1577), sent by D. John to Madrid to represent to Philip how cut off he was, and the grave risks that these States and his own person ran. Escovedo had not forgotten, among his many preoccupations, the adventure at the Chorrillos, that D. John had told him of to moderate his zeal for the Princess de évoli, and one of his first cares on reaching Madrid was to inform himself of the state of the case. At once he found that the fact was true, the scandal public, and the honoured memory of Ruy Gómez degraded by the lightness of the widow and the horrible ingratitude of Antonio Pérez, who owed everything to this great patrician. Loyal Escovedo was greatly distressed, and wishing to retrieve the honour of his dead benefactor and friend went to the house of the Princess, intending to warn and counsel her with all the regard he had for her. She was in the saloon with Do?a Brianda de Gúzman; he waited patiently until this lady had left, and then spoke, not with his usual brusqueness, but with deep and affectionate concern, of the dreadful rumours that were going about, and said that she must close her door to Antonio Pérez in order not to give support to them. Blind with rage on hearing him, the Princess rose, and in an unsteady voice answered that "it did not concern squires what great ladies did." And with this she turned and went to the further end of the room. All of which is told by Do?a Catalina de Herrera, duenna to the Princess.