This place was captured in 1263, by Alphonso the Wise, King of Castille, who was a short time after dispossessed of his conquest by the King of Fez; and the Moorish Sultans have kept it to the present time, though the city itself has often attempted to throw off the imperial yoke.

The Hôtel de Castille, the Maison Dorée, the Petite Jeannette, the Café de Paris, the Café Anglais became for three hours the targets of the cannonade.

Spain became a nation a few years later by the expulsion of the Moors and the union of Castille and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella.

The bishop had provided himself with great torches of white wax of Castille.

Louis IX. and Blanche of Castille, his queen, retired to Clisson, at the time the English, under Henry III.

But even without examining into all the royal abodes, it will suffice to give an account of the Hôtel de Bohême, which, after having been the home of the Sires de Nesles, of Queen Blanche of Castille, and other great persons, was given by Charles VI., in 1388, to his brother, the famous Duke Louis of Orleans.

Here, in 1505, he lodged Philip of Austria, the matrimonial King of Castille, tempest-driven into his dominions, and showed him the pomp and glory of his capital.

It was the young and ambitious Princess Blanche of Castille, wife of Prince Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, after her husband's departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for him and to send him means of sustaining the war.

Louis, incensed, disgusted, and ill, himself left his army, to return to his own Northern France; but he never reached it, for fever compelled him to halt at Montpensier, in Auvergne, where he died on the 8th of November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history of France no glory save that of having been the son of Philip Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castille, and the father of St. Louis.

And in this part of his history he is not the only royal and really regnant personage we encounter: for of the forty-four years of St. Louis's reign, nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, pertained to the government of Queen Blanche of Castille rather than that of the king her son.

In the south, Lautrec, after having made head for three days and three nights against the attacks of a Spanish army which had crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the Constable of Castille, forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat.

Don Sancho, son of Don Jaime of Aragon, and brother to the Queen of Castille, thought more of his title of "Chief Leader" than of his mitre of Toledo, and on the advance of the Moors went out to meet them in the martial field.

Behind the locked gates of the chapel of the kings, guarded by the stone heralds on pedestals, lay the kings of Castille in their tombs, their effigies crowned, in golden armour, praying, with their swords by their sides.

That of the unhappy constable of Castille was surrounded by four knights of Santiago, wrapped in the mantle of their Order, seeming to keep guard over their grand master, who lay buried without his head in the stone sarcophagus, bordered with Gothic mouldings.

Beneath highly-decorated pointed arches were the tombs of the most ancient kings of Castille, and that of the Cardinal Mendoza.

The clergy had turned their eyes towards Don Carlos, who was beginning the war in the northern provinces; the king of the Vascongados mountains would be able to remedy everything when he came down into the plains of Castille.

The free municipalities disappeared, their defenders went to the scaffold both in Castille and Valencia; the Spaniard abandoned his plough or his weaving to range the world with an arquebus on his shoulder, and the town militias were transformed into bands which fought all over Europe without knowing why.

The president of Castille travelled through the province with the executioner to wring the scanty harvest from the peasants.

On fit ducs et grands de Castille Mes neuf compagnons de bonheur, Qui s'en allèrent à Séville Epouser des dames d'honneur.

HIPPOLYTE CASTILLE.

Now we find her seeking asylum at convents from Aix to Madrid; now queening it at the Court of Savoy, with Duke Charles Emmanuel for lover; now she is dazzling Madrid with the Almirante of Castille and many another high-placed worshipper dancing attendance on her; and now she is in Rome, turning the heads of grave cardinals with her witcheries.

I left Castille in the year 1514, along with Pedro Arias de Avila, then appointed to the government of Tierra Firma, and arrived with him at Nombre de Dios.

Palm soap, Castille soap, and those which are the least perfumed, should always be preferred.

The year 1486 was signalised in Rome by the arrival of an embassy from Ferdinand and Isabella to make the usual oath of obedience on behalf of the Catholic sovereigns of Castille and Leon to their spiritual over-lord, the Pope.

Persiani, I note, supported by Lablache and Rubini, had a most triumphant reception in Inez de Castro, while Albertazzi was very coldly received in Blanche de Castille.