King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

IN SPAIN
257
Ayala in the fourteenth century, in rebel-
lion against his natural lord and king,
Peter I, set out to show that he too was
deserving of God’s judgement, and that
the line of New Kings was God’s punish-
ment for the sins of the Old. Now a third
time in the fifteenth, the historians of the
stronger battailions construct their case for
God and depict the establishment of the
Catholic Kings as though the sun were ris-
ing upon the earth after another destruc-
tion of Sodom.
Whether Enrique IV was really all that
he was called is mightily to be doubted.
He has been made out a sort of preliminary
study for the invariable protagonist of
J. K. Huysmans’ novels, but it is more
probable that he was only such another
as the English Edward II, though he wanted
a Marlowe; fantastical and unhappy,
wayward and ennuye, corrupt and wanton,
who wore his shame like purple with the
pitiful effrontery of the helpless.
i
Character
of Enrique
IV
AND MONOGRAPHS