FOOTNOTES:[5]Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, theonlybattle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors.[6]The well-known burst of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Up, guards, and at them!" has been declared, upon the best authority, namely, his own, to be no less apocryphal than those above-mentioned.
[5]Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, theonlybattle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors.
[5]Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, theonlybattle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors.
[6]The well-known burst of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Up, guards, and at them!" has been declared, upon the best authority, namely, his own, to be no less apocryphal than those above-mentioned.
[6]The well-known burst of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Up, guards, and at them!" has been declared, upon the best authority, namely, his own, to be no less apocryphal than those above-mentioned.
The 28th of September, 1556, was a great day in the annals of Laredo, in Biscay. Once a commercial station of the Romans, and, in later times, the naval arsenal whence St. Ferdinand sailed to the Guadalquivir and the conquest of Seville, its haven is now so decayed and sand-choked, that it can scarcely afford shelter to a fishing-craft. Here, however, on the day in question, three centuries ago, a fleet of seventy Flemish and Spanish sail cast anchor. From a frigate bearing the imperial standard of the house of Austria came a group of gentlemen and ladies, of whom the principal personage was a spare and sallow man, past the middle age, and plainly attired in mourning. He was received at the landing-place by the bishop of Salamanca and some attendants, and being worn with suffering and fatigue, he was carried up from the boat in a chair. By his side walked two ladies, in widows' weeds, who appeared to be about the same age as himself, and whose pale features, both in cast and expression, strongly resembled his own. Since Columbus stepped ashore at Palos, with his red men from the New World, Spain had seen no debarkation so remarkable; for the voyagers were, the emperor Charles V. and his sisters, Mary queen of Hungary, and Eleanor, queen of Portugal and France, now on their way from Brussels, where they had made their last appearance on the stage of the world, to those Spanish cloisters, wherein they had resolved to await the hour when the curtain should drop on life itself.
Charles himself appears to have been powerfully affected by the scene and circumstances around him. Kneeling upon the long-desired soil of Spain, he is said to have kissed the earth, ejaculating, "I salute thee, O common mother! Naked came I forth of the womb to receive the treasures of the earth, and naked am I about to return to the bosom of the universal mother." He then drew from his bosom the crucifix which he always wore, and kissing it devoutly, returned thanks to the Saviour for having thus brought him in safety to the wished-for haven. The ocean itself furnished its comment upon the irretraceable step which he had taken. From Flushing to Laredo, the weather had been calm, and the voyage prosperous: but the evening of theday of landing closed with a storm, which shattered and dispersed the fleet, and sunk the frigate which the emperor had quitted a few hours before. This accident must have recalled to his recollection a similar escape which he had made many years before on his coronation-day at Bologna. There he had just passed through a wooden gallery which connected his palace with the church where the pope and the crown awaited him, when the props upon which the structure rested gave way, and it fell with a sudden crash, killing several persons in the street below.
The emperor's first care, after landing, was to send a message to the general of the order of St. Jerome, requiring his attendance at Valladolid, and desiring that no time might be lost in preparing the convent of Yuste for his reception. He himself set forward, as soon as he was able, and was carried sometimes in a horse-litter, sometimes in a chair on men's shoulders, by slow and painful stages to Burgos. Near that ancient city he was met by the constable of Castille, Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, who lodged him for some days in the noble palace of his family, known as the Casa del Cordon, from a massive cord of St. Francis, wrought in stone, with which the architect has adorned and protected the great portal. The little town of Dueñas was the next resting-place, and there its lord, the count of Buendia, did the honors of his feudal castle on the adjacent height rising abruptly from the bare plains of the Arlanzon. At Torquemada, the royal party was received by the bishop of the diocese, Pedro de Gasca, a divine, whose skilful diplomacy, in repressing a formidable rebellion, had saved Peru to Castille, and who had lately been rewarded by the emperor with the mitre of Palencia. But in spite of these demonstrations of respect and gratitude, Charles was made painfully sensible of the change which his own act had wrought in his condition. The barons and the great churchmen, who, a few months before, would have flocked from all parts to do him honor, now appeared in very scanty numbers, or they permitted him to pass unnoticed through the lands and by the homes which they perhaps owed to his bounty. He and his sister Eleanor must have remembered with a sigh the time when he first set foot in Spain, thirty-eight years before, and found the shores of Asturias, and the highways of Castille, thronged with loyal crowds, hastening to tender their homage. In the forgetfulness of the new generation, he may also have been reminded how he himself had treated, with coldness and slighting, the great cardinal Ximenes, who had worn out his declining years in defending and maintaining the prerogatives of the catholic crown. His long and varied experience of men made him incapable of deriving any pleasure from their applause, but not altogether incapable of being pained by their neglect. His pride was hurt at finding himself so quickly forgotten; and he is said to have evinced a bitter sense of the surprise, by the remark, "I might well say that I was naked!" It is probable, therefore, that he declined the honors of a public entry into Valladolid, not merely from a desire to shun the pomps and vanities of state, but also from a secret apprehension that it might prove but a pitiful shadow of former pageants. That the citizens might not be balked of their show, while the emperor entered privately on the 23rd of October, it was agreed that the two queens, his sisters, should make their appearance there in a public manner the next day.
Valladolid was at that time the opulent and flourishing capital of Spain, and the seat of government, carried on under the regency of the emperor's daughter, Juanna. This young princess was the widow of the prince of Brazil, heir-apparent of the crown of Portugal, and mother of the unfortunate king Sebastian. She performed the duties of her high place with great prudence, firmness, and moderation; but with this peculiarity, that she appeared at her public receptions closely veiled, allowing her face to be seen only for a moment, that the foreign ambassadors might be satisfied of her personal identity. With her nephew, Don Carlos, then a boy of ten years old, by her side, the Infanta met her father on the staircase of the palace of the Count of Melito, which he had chosen for his place of sojourn. The day following, the arrival of the two queens was celebrated by a grand procession, and by an evening banquet and ball in the royal palace, at which the emperor appears to have been present. Some few of the grandees, the Admiral and the Constable of Castille, Benavente, Astorga, Sesa, and others, were there to do honor to their ancient lord, whose hand was also kissed in due form by the members of the council of Castille. At this ball, or perhaps at some later festivity, Charles caused the wives of all his personal attendants to be assembled around him, and bade each, in particular, farewell. Perico de Sant Erbas, a famous jester of the court, passing by at the moment, the emperor good-humoredly saluted him by taking off his hat. "What! do you uncover to me?" said the bitter fool; "does it mean that you are no longer emperor?" "No, Pedro," replied the object of the jest; "it means that I have nothing to give you beyond this courtesy."
During his stay of ten days, Charles bestowed but a passing glance on the machine of government over which he had so long presided, and which was now directed by his demure daughter. The secretary of the council, Juan Vazquez de Molina, an old and trusted servant of his own, was the only public man with whom he held any confidential converse. The new rooms which he had caused to be erected at Yuste, and the ordering of his life there, were now of more moment to him than the movements of the leaguers in Flanders, or the state of opinion in Germany. He thereforegave frequent audiences to Francisco de Tofiño, the general of the Jeromites, and to Fray Martin de Angulo, prior of Yuste. Having resolved that his solitude should be shared by his natural son, Don Juan of Austria, a nameless lad of ten, then living in the family of his mayordomo, Luis de Quixada, he despatched that trusty follower to remove his household from Castille to Estremadura.
It was at Valladolid that Charles saw for the first and last time the ill-fated child who bore his name, and had the prospect one day of wearing some of his crowns. Although only ten years old, Don Carlos had already shown symptoms of the mental malady which darkened the long life of queen Juana, his great-grandmother by the side both of his father, Philip of Spain, and of his mother, Mary of Portugal. Of a sullen and passionate temper, he lived in a state of perpetual rebellion against his aunt, and displayed in the nursery the weakly mischievous spirit which marked his short career at his father's court. His grandfather appears not to have suspected that his mind was diseased, but to have regarded him as a forward and untractable child, whose future interests would be best served by an unsparing use of the rod. He therefore recommended increased severity of discipline, and remarked to his sisters, that he had observed with concern the boy's unpromising conduct and manners, and that it was very doubtful how the man would turn out. This opinion was conveyed by queen Eleanor to Philip II., who had requested his aunt to note carefully the impression left by his son on the emperor's mind; and it is said to have laid the foundation for the aversion which the king entertained towards Carlos. Following the advice of her father, the Infanta soon after ordered the removal of the prince to Burgos; but the plague breaking out in that city, he was sent, by an ominous chance, to Tordesillas, to the palace from whose windows the unhappy Juana, dead to the living world, had gazed for forty-seven years at the sepulchre of her fair and faithless lord.
A sojourn of about ten days at Valladolid sufficed the emperor for rest, and for the preparations for his journey. His daughter was occupied with the duties of administration; and of his sisters he appears to have seen enough on the way from Flanders. Whether it was that he was weary of these royal matrons, or that he regarded their society as a worldly enjoyment which he ought to forego, he declined their proposal to come and reside near his retreat, at Plasencia. After much debate, they finally chose Guadalaxara as their residence, where they quarelled with the duke of Infantado for refusing them his palace, and went to open war with the alcalde for imprisoning one of their serving-men.
Early in November,[7]their brother set out on his last earthly journey. The distance from Valladolid to Yuste was between forty and fifty leagues, or somewhere between 130 and 150 English miles. The route taken has not been specified by the emperor's biographers. The best and the easiest road lay through Salamanca and Plasencia. But as he does not appear to have passed through the latter city, he probably likewise avoided the former, and the pageants and orations with which the doctors of the great university would have delighted to celebrate his visit. In that case, he must have taken the road by Medina del Campo and Peñaranda. At Medina he doubtless was lodged in the fine old palace of the crown, called the Torre de Mota, where, fifty years before, his grandmother, Isabella the Catholic, ended her noble life and glorious reign; and at Peñaranda he was probably entertained in the mansion of the Bracamontes. These two towns rise like islands in their naked undulating plains, covered partly with corn, partly with marshy heath. Southward, the country is clothed with straggling woods of evergreen oak, becoming denser at the base and on the lower slopes of the wild Sierra of Bejar, the centre of that mountain chain which forms the backbone of the Peninsula, extending from Moncayo in Aragon, to the Rock of Lisbon on the Atlantic. At the alpine town of Bejar, cresting a bold height, and overhanging a tumbling stream, the great family of the Zuñigas, created dukes of the place by Isabella, and known to fame in arts and arms and the dedication of Don Quixote, possess a noble castle, ruined by the French, which there can be little doubt served as a halting-place for the imperial pilgrim. He advanced by very short stages, travelling in a litter, and often suffering great pain. But his spirits rose as he neared the desired haven. In the craggy gorge of Puertonuevo, as he was being carried over some unusually difficult ground in a chair, his attendants were deploring the extreme ruggedness of the pass. "I shall never have to go through another," said he, "and truly it is worth enduring some pain to reach so sweet and healthy a resting place as Yuste." Having crossed the mountains without mischance, he arrived on the eleventh of November, St. Martin's day, at Xarandilla, a little village at the foot of the steep Peñanegra, and then, as now, chiefly peopled with swineherds, whose pigs, feeding in the surrounding forests, maintain the fame of porciferous Estremadura. Here he took up his abode in the castle of the count of Oropesa, head of a powerful branch of the great house of Toledo, and feudal lord of Xarandilla.
This visit, which was intended to be brief, was prolonged for nearly three months. Before entering the cloister of Yuste, the emperor wished to pay off the greater part of his retinue. But for this purpose money was needful, and money was the one thing always wanting in the affairs of Spain. The delay which took place in providing it on this occasion has often been cited as an instance of theingratitude of Philip II.; but it is probable that a bare exchequer and a clumsy system of finance, which crippled his actions as a king, have also blackened his character as a son.
The emperor endured the annoyance with his usual coolness. On his arrival at the castle, he was waited on by the prior of Yuste, with whom he had already become acquainted at Valladolid. He afterwards repaid the attention by making a forenoon excursion to Yuste, and inspecting more carefully the spot which his memory and his hope had so long pictured as the sweetest nook in a world of disappointment. This visit took place on the 23d of November, St. Catharine's day. On alighting at the convent, Charles immediately repaired to the church, and prayed there awhile; after which, he was conducted over the monastic buildings, and then over the new apartments which had been erected for his reception. The plan of this addition had been made by the architect, Gaspar de Vega, from a sketch, it is said, drawn by the emperor's own hand. He now expressed himself as quite satisfied with the accuracy with which his ideas had been wrought out, and returned through the wintry woods in high good humor.
The arrival at Xarandilla of Luis Quixada, with Don Juan of Austria, was another of those little incidents which had become great events in the life of Charles. As he did not choose during his life to acknowledge the youth as his son, the future hero of Lepanto passed for the page of Quixada, and was presented to his father as bearer of an offering from Doña Magdalena de Ulloa. He was then in his twelfth year, and was remarkable for his personal beauty and his engaging manners. These so captivated Charles, that he ever afterwards liked to have the boy about him; and it was one of the few solaces of his solitude to note the princely promise of this unknown son of his old age.
At length, the tardy treasury messenger arrived, bearing a bag of thirty thousand ducats for the former possessor of Mexico and Peru. The emperor was now enabled to pay their wages to the servants whom he was about to discharge. Some of these he recommended to the notice of the king or the princess-regent; to others he dispensed sparing gratuities in money; and so he closed his accounts with the world.
On the afternoon of the third of February, 1557, being the feast of St. Blas, he was lifted into his litter for the last time, and was borne westward along the rough mountain track, beneath the leafless oaks, to the monastery of Yuste. He was accompanied by the count of Oropesa, Don Fernando de Toledo, and his own personal suite, including the followers whom he had just discharged, but who evinced their respect by attending him to his journey's close. The cavalcade reached Yuste about five in the evening. Prior Angulo was waiting to receive his imperial guest at the gate. On alighting, the emperor, being unable to walk, was placed in a chair, and carried to the door of the church. At the threshold he was met by the whole brotherhood in procession, chanting theTe Deumto the music of the organ. The altars and the aisle were brilliantly lighted up with tapers, and decked with their richest frontals, hangings, and plate. Borne through the pomp to the steps of the high altar, Charles knelt down and returned thanks to God for the happy termination of his journey, and joined in the vesper service of the brotherhood. When that was ended, the friars came to be presented to him one by one, each kissing his hand and receiving his fraternal embrace. During this ceremony, his departing servants stood round, expressing their emotion by tears and lamentations, which were still heard late in the evening, around the gate of the convent. Attended by the count of Oropesa and the gentlemen of his suite, Charles then retired to take possession of his new home, and to enter upon that life of prayer and repose for which he had so long sighed.
The monastery of Yuste stands on the lower slopes of the lofty mountain chain which walls towards the north the beautiful Vera, or valley of Plasencia. The city of Plasencia is seated seven leagues to the westward in the plains below; the village of Quacos lies about an English mile to the south, towards the foot of the mountain. The monastery owes its name to a streamlet which descends from the sierra, and its origin to the piety of one Sancho Martin of Quacos, who granted in 1402 a piece of land to two hermits from Plasencia. Here these holy men built their cells and planted an orchard, and obtained, in 1408, by the favor of the Infanta Don Fernando, a bull for the foundation of a Jeromite house in the rule of St. Augustine. In spite, however, of this authority, while the works were still in progress, the friars of a neighboring convent, armed with an order from the bishop of Plasencia, set upon them and dispossessed them of their land and unfinished walls, an act of violence against which they appealed to the archbishop of Santiago. The judgment of the primate being given in their favor, they next applied for aid to their neighbor, Garci Alvarez de Toledo, lord of Oropesa, who accordingly came forth from his castle of Xarandilla, and drove out the intruders. Nor was it only with the strong hand that this noble protected the young community; for at the chapter of St. Jerome held at Guadalupe in 1415, their house would not have been received into the order but for his generosity in guaranteeing a revenue sufficient for the maintenance of a prior and twelve brethren under a rule in which mendicancy was forbidden. The buildings were also erected at his cost, and his subsequent benefactions were large and frequent. He was therefore constituted by the grateful monks protector of the convent, and the distinction became hereditary in his descendants, the counts of Oropesa.
Their early struggles past, the Jeromites of Yuste grew and prospered. Gifts and bequests were the chief events in their peaceful annals. They became patrons of the chapelries and hermitages; they made them orchards and olive-groves, and their corn and wine increased. Their hostel, dispensary, and other offices, were patterns of monastic comfort and order; and in due time, they built a new church, a simple, solid, and spacious structure, in the pointed style. A few years before the emperor came to live amongst them, they had added to their small antique cloister a new quadrangle of stately proportions and elegant classical design.
Though more remarkable for the natural beauty around its walls than for the vigor of the spiritual life within, Yuste did not fail to boast of its worthies. The prior Jerome, a son of the great house of Zuniga, was cited as a model of austere and active holiness. The lay brother, Melchor de Yepes, crippled in felling a huge chesnut-tree in the forest, was a pattern of bed-ridden patience and piety. Fray Hernando de Corral was the scholar and book collector of the house; although he was also, for that reason, perhaps, considered as scarcely of a sound mind. He left many copious notes in the fly-leaves of his black-letter folios. Fray Juan de Xeres, an old soldier of the great Captain, was distinguished by the gift of second-sight, and was nursed on his death-bed by the eleven thousand virgins. Still more favored was Fray Rodrigo de Caceres, for the Blessed Mary herself, in answer to his repeated prayers, came down in visible shape, and received his spirit on the eve of the feast of her Assumption. And prior Diego de San Geronimo was so popular in the Vera as a preacher, that when he grew old and infirm, the people of Garganta la Olla endeavored to lure him to their pulpit by making a road, which was called that of Fray Diego.
In works of charity—that redeeming virtue of the monastic system—the fathers of Yuste were diligent and bounteous. Six hundred fanegas, or about one hundred and twenty quarters of wheat, in ordinary years, and in years of scarcity, as much as fifteen hundred fanegas, were distributed at the convent-gate; large donations of bread, meat, and oil, and some money, were made, either publicly or in private, by the prior, at Easter and other festivals; and the sick poor in the village of Quacos were freely supplied with food, medicine, and advice.
The lodging, or palace, as the friars loved to call it, of the emperor, was constructed under the eye of Fray Antonio de Villacastin, a brother of the house, and afterwards well known to fame as the master of the works at the Escorial. The site of it had been inspected in May, 1554, by Philip II., then on his way to England to marry queen Mary Tudor. Backed by the massive south wall of the church, the building presented its simple front of two stories to the garden and the noontide sun. Each story contained four chambers, two on either side of a corridor, which traverses the structure from east to west, and leads at either end into a broad porch, or covered gallery, supported on pillars, and open to the air. All the rooms were furnished with ample fire-places, in accordance with the Flemish wants and ways of the inhabitants. The chambers which look on the garden are bright and pleasant, but those on the north side are gloomy, and even dark, the light being admitted only by windows opening on the corridor, or on the external and deeply-shadowed porches. Charles inhabited the upper rooms, and slept in that at the north-east corner, from which a door or window had been cut through the church wall, within the chancel, and close to the high altar. From the eastern porch, or gallery, an inclined path led down into the garden, to save him the fatigue of going up and down stairs. His attendants were, for the most part, lodged in apartments built for them near the new cloister; and the hostel of the convent was given up to the physician, the bakers, and the brewers. His private rooms being surrounded on three sides by the garden, he took exclusive possession of that, and put it under the care of gardeners of his own. The friars established their potherbs in a piece of ground to the eastward, behind some tall elm trees, and adjoining the emperor's domain, but separated from it by a high wall, which they caused to be built when they found that he wished for complete seclusion.
Time, with its chances and changes, has dealt rudely with this fair home of the monarch and the monk. Yuste was sacked in 1809 by the French invader; and in later years, the Spanish reformer has annihilated the race of picturesque drones, who, for a while, re-occupied, and might have repaired the ruins of their pleasant hive. Of the two cloisters, the greater is choked with the rubbish of its fallen upper story, its richly-carved capitals peeping here and there from the soil and wild shrubs. Two sides of the smaller and older cloister still stands, with tottering blackened walls, and rotting floors and ceilings. The strong, granite-vaulted church is a hollow shell; the fine wood-work of its stalls has been partly used for fuel, partly carried off to the parish church of Quacos; and the beautiful blue and yellow tiles which lined the chancel are fast dropping from the walls. In the emperor's dwelling, the lower chambers are turned into a magazine of firewood, and in the rooms above, where he lived and died, maize and olives are garnered, and the silkworm winds its cocoon in dust and darkness. But the lovely face of nature, the hill, the forest, and the field, the generous soil and the genial sky, remain with charms unchanged, to testify how well the imperial eagle chose the nest wherein to fold his wearied wings. From the balcony of Charles's cabinet the eye rangesover a foreground of rounded knolls, clad in walnut and chestnut, in which the mountain dies gently away into the broad bosom of the Vera. Not a building is in sight, but a summer-house, peering above mulberry tops, at the lower side of the garden, and a hermitage of Our Lady of Solitude, about a mile distant, hung upon a rocky height, that swells like an isle out of the sea of forest. Immediately below the windows the garden slopes gently to the sun, shaded here and there with the massive foliage of the fig, or feathery almond boughs, and breathing perfume from tall orange-trees, cuttings of which some monks, themselves transplanted, vainly strove to keep alive at the bleak Escorial. And beyond the west wall, filling all the wide space in front of the gates of the convent and the palace, rises the noble shade of the great walnut-tree,el nogal grande, of Yuste—a forest king, which has seen the hermit's cell rise into a royal convent, and sink into a ruin; which has seen the beginning and the end of the Spanish order of Jerome, and the Spanish dynasty of Austria.
At Xarandilla, Charles had cast aside the last shreds of the purple. The annual revenue which he had reserved to himself out of the wealth of half the world, was twelve thousand ducats, or about fifteen hundred pounds sterling. His confidential attendants were eleven in number: Luis Quixada, chamberlain and chief of the household; Martin Gatzelu, secretary; William Van Male, gentleman of the chamber; Moron, gentleman of the chamber and almoner; Juan Gaytan, steward; Henrique Matisio Charles Pubest, usher; and two valets. Juanelo Turiano, an Italian engineer, who had acquired a considerable reputation by his hydraulic works to supply water to the Alcazar of Toledo, was engaged to assist in the philosophical experiments and mechanical labors which formed the emperor's principal amusement. Last, but not least, a Jeromite father from Sta. Engracia, at Zaragoza, Fray Juan de Regla, filled the important post of confessor. The lower rank of servants, cooks, brewers, bakers, grooms, and scullions, and a couple of laundresses, swelled the total number of his household to about sixty persons, an establishment not greater than was then maintained by many a private hidalgo.
The mayordomo, Luis Quixada, or, to give him his entire appellation, Luis Mendez Quixada Manuel de Figueredo y Mendoza, is worthy of notice, not only as first minister of this tiny court, but as being closely associated with one of the greatest names in the military history of Europe. A courtier and soldier from his early youth, he was heir of an elder brother, slain before Tunis, who had been one of the most distinguished captains of the famous infantry of Castille; and he had been himself for many years the tried companion-in-arms and the trusted personal friend of the emperor. In 1549, he married Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, a lady of ancient race and gentlest nature, with whom he retired for a while to his patrimonial lordship of Villagarcia, near Valladolid.
On his quitting the court at Brussels, Charles confided to his care his illegitimate son, Don Juan of Austria, then a boy of four years old, exacting a promise of strict secrecy as to his parentage. The boy was accordingly brought up with the tenderest care by the childless Magdalena: and the secret of his birth so well kept, that she, for many years, suspected him to be the fruit of some early attachment of her lord. When the emperor retired to Yuste, Quixada followed him thither, removing his household from Villagarcia, and establishing it in the neighborhood of the convent, probably in the village of Quacos.
He was thus enabled to enjoy somewhat of the society of his wife, and the emperor had the gratification of seeing his son when he chose. Don Juan was now a fine lad, in his eleventh year. He passed amongst the neighbors for Quixada's page, and remained under the guardianship of Doña Magdalena, whose efforts to imbue him with devotion towards the Blessed Virgin are supposed by his historians to have borne good fruit in the banners, embroidered with Our Lady's image, which floated from his galleys at Lepanto. He likewise exercised in the Yuste forest the cross-bow, which had dealt destruction amongst the sparrows of Leganes, his early home in Castille.
If the number of servants in the train of Charles should savor, in this age, somewhat of unnecessary parade, the ascetic character of the recluse will be redeemed by a glance at the interior of his dwelling. "The palace of Yuste, when prepared for his reception, seemed," says the historian Sandoval, "rather to have been newly pillaged by the enemy, than furnished for a great prince." Accustomed from his infancy to the finest tapestry designed by Italian pencils for the looms of Flanders, he now lived within walls entirety bare, except in his bedchamber, which was hung with coarse brown or black cloth. The sole appliances for rest to be found in his apartments were a bed and an old arm-chair, not worth four reals. Four silver trenchers of the plainest kind, for the use of his table, were the only things amongst his goods and chattels which could tempt a thief to break through and steal. A few choice pictures alone remained with him, as memorials of the magnificence which he had foregone, and of the arts which he had so loved. Over the high altar of the convent church, and within sight of his bed, he is said to have placed that celebrated composition known as The Glory of Titian, a picture of the Last Judgment, in which Charles, his beautiful empress, and their royal children, were represented, in the great painter's noblest style, as entering the heavenly mansions of life eternal. He had also brought with him a portrait of the empress,and a picture of Our Lord's Agony in the Garden, likewise from the easel of Titian; and there is now at the Escorial a masterpiece by the same hand—St. Jerome praying in his garden, which is traditionally reputed to have hung in his oratory at Yuste.
From the garden beneath the palace windows the emperor's table was supplied with fruit and vegetables: and a couple of cows, grazing in the forest, furnished him with milk. A pony and an old mule composed the entire stud of the prince, who formerly took peculiar pleasure in possessing the stoutest chargers of Guelderland, and the fleetest genets of Cordova.
To atone, perhaps, for such deficiency of creature comforts, the general of the Jeromites and the prior of Yuste had been at some pains to provide their guest with spiritual luxuries. Knowing his passionate love of music, they had recruited the force of their choir with fourteen or fifteen brethren, distinguished for their fine voices and musical skill. And for his sole benefit and delectation, they had provided no less than three preachers, the most eloquent in the Spanish fold of Jerome. The first of these, Fray Juan de Açaloras, harangued his way to the bishopric of the Canaries; the second, Fray Francisco de Villalva, also obtained by his sermons great fame, and the post of chaplain to Philip II.; while the third, Fray Juan de Santandres, though less noted as an orator, was had in reverence as a prophet, having foretold the exact day and hour of his own death.
A short time sufficed for the emperor to accustom himself to the simple and changeless tenor of monastic life. Every morning his confessor appeared at his bed-side, to inquire how he had passed the night, and to assist him in his private devotions. At ten he rose, and was dressed by his valets; after which he heard mass in the convent church. According to his invariable habit, which in Italy was said to have given rise to the saying,dalla messa, alla mensa(from mass to mess), he went from church to dinner, about noon. Eating had ever been one of his favorite pleasures, and it was now the only physical gratification which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. He continued, therefore, to dine upon the rich dishes against which his ancient and trusty confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, had vainly protested a quarter of a century before. Eel-pasties, anchovies, and frogs were the savory food which he loved, unwisely and too well, as Frederick afterwards loved his polenta. The meal was long, for his teeth were few and far between; and his hands, also, were much disabled by gout, in spite of which he always chose to carve for himself. His physician attended him at table, and at least learned the cause of the mischiefs which his art was to counteract. While he dined, he conversed with the doctor on matters of science, generally of natural history, and if any difference of opinion arose between them, the confessor was sent for to settle the point out of Pliny. When the cloth was drawn, Fray Juan de Regla came to read to him, generally from one of his favorite divines,—Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard; an exercise which was followed by conversation and an hour of slumber. At three o'clock, the monks were assembled in the convent to hear a sermon delivered by one of the imperial preachers, or a passage read from the Bible, usually from the epistle to the Romans, the emperor's favorite book. To these discourses or readings Charles always listened with profound attention; and if sickness or letter-writing prevented his attendance, he never failed to send a formal excuse to the prior, and to require from his confessor an account of what had been preached or read. The rest of the afternoon he sometimes whiled away in the workshop of Turriano, and in the construction of pieces of mechanism, especially clocks, of which more than a hundred were said, in one rather improbable account, to tick in the emperor's apartments, and reckon to a fraction the hours of his retired leisure. Sometimes he fed his pet birds, which appear to have taken the place of the stately wolf-hounds that followed at his heel in the days when he sat to Titian; or a stroll amongst his fruit-trees and flowers filled up the time to vespers and supper. At the lower end of the garden, approached by a closely shaded path, there may still be seen the ruins of a little summer-house, closely enbowered, and looking out upon the woodlands of the Vera. Beyond this limit the emperor rarely extended his excursions, which were always made, slowly and painfully, on foot; for the first time that he mounted his pony he was seized with a violent giddiness, and almost fell into the arms of his attendants. Such was the last appearance, in the saddle, of the accomplished cavalier, of whom his troopers used to say, that had he not been born a king, he would have been the prince of light-horsemen, and whose seat and hand excited at Calais gate the admiration of the English knights fresh from the tournays—
"Where England vied with France in prideOn the famous field of gold."
"Where England vied with France in prideOn the famous field of gold."
Music, which had been one of the chief pleasures of his secular life, continued to solace and cheer him to the last. In the conduct of the organ and the choir he took the greatest interest, and through the window which opened from his bedchamber upon the high altar, his voice might often be heard accompanying the chant of the friars. His ear never failed to detect a wrong note, and the mouth whence it came; and he would frequently mutter the name of the offender, with the addition of "hideputa bermejo," or some other epithet which savored rather of the soldier than the saint. Guerrero, a chapel-master of Seville, having presented him with his book of masses and motets, he caused one of the former to be performed before him. When it was ended, he remarked to his confessor that Guerrero was a cunning thief; and going over the piece,he pointed out the plagiarisms with which it abounded, and named the composers whose works had suffered pillage.
In laying down the sceptre, Charles had resolved to have no farther personal concern with temporal affairs. The petitioners, who at first besieged his retreat, soon ceased from troubling when they found themselves referred to the princess-regent at Valladolid, or to the king in Flanders. He declined giving any attention to matters beyond the walls of the convent, unless they concerned the interests of his children or the church. His advice was, however, frequently asked by his son and daughter, and couriers often went and came between Yuste and the courts. But with the patronage of the state he never interfered, except on two occasions, when he recommended the case of a Catalonian lady to the favorable consideration of the Infanta, and asked for an order of knighthood for a veteran brother in arms.
The rites of religion now formed the business of his life, and he transacted that business with his usual method and regularity. No enthusiast novice was ever more solicitous to fulfil to the letter every law of his rubric. On the first Sunday of his residence at the convent, as he went to high mass, he observed the friar who was sprinkling the holy water, hesitate when his turn came to be aspersed. Taking the hyssop, therefore, from his hand, he bestowed a plentiful shower upon his own face and clothes, saying as he returned the instrument, "This, father, is the way you must do it, next time." Another friar, offering the pyx to his lips in a similar diffident manner, he took it between his hands, and not only kissed it fervently, but applied it to his forehead and eyes with true oriental reverence. Although provided with an indulgence for eating before communion, he never availed himself of it but when he was suffering from extreme debility; and he always heard two masses on the days when he received the eucharist. On Ash Wednesday, he required his entire household, down to the meanest scullion, to communicate, and on these occasions he stood on the top step of the altar, to observe that the muster was complete. For the benefit of his Flemings, he had a chaplain of their country, who lived at Xarandilla, and came over at stated times, when his flock were assembled for confession. The emperor himself usually heard mass from the window of his bedchamber, which looked into the church; but at complines he went up into the choir with the fathers, and prayed in a devout and audible tone, in his tribune. During the season of Lent, which came round twice during his residence at Yuste, he regularly appeared in his place in the choir, on Fridays, when it was the custom of the fraternity to perform their discipline in public; and at the end of the appointed prayers, extinguishing the taper which he, like the rest, held in his hand, he flogged himself with such sincerity of purpose, that the scourge was stained with blood, and the beholders singularly edified. On Good Friday, he went forth at the head of his household, to adore the holy cross; and although he was so infirm that he was obliged to be almost carried by the men on whom he leaned, he insisted upon prostrating himself three times upon the ground, in the manner of the friars, before he approached the blessed symbol with his lips. The feast of St. Matthew, his birthday—a day of great things in his life,—he always celebrated with peculiar devotion. He appeared at mass, in a dress of ceremony, and wearing the collar of the Fleece; and at the time of the offertory, he went forward, and expressed his gratitude to God by a large donation. The church was thronged with strangers; and the crowd who could not gain admittance was so great, that one sermon was preached outside, whilst another was being pronounced before the emperor and his household within.
With the friars, his hosts, Charles lived on the most familiar and friendly footing. When the visitors of the order paid their triennial visit of inspection to Yuste, they represented to him, with all respect, that his majesty himself was the only inmate of the convent with whom they had any fault to find; and they entreated him to discontinue those benefactions which he was in the habit of bestowing on the fraternity, and which the rule of St. Jerome did not allow his children to receive. He knew all the fathers by name and by sight, and frequently conversed with them, as well as with the prior. One of his favorites was a lay-brother, called Alonso Mudarra, once a man of rank and family in the world, and now working out his own salvation in the humble post of cook to the convent. This worthy had an only daughter, who did not share her father's contempt for mundane things. When she came with her husband to visit him at Yuste, Fray Alonso, arrayed in his dirtiest apron, thus addressed her: "Daughter, behold my gala apparel; obedience is now my treasure and my pride; for you, in your silks and vanities, I entertain profound pity." So saying, he returned to his kitchen, and would never see her more: an effort of holiness to which he appears to owe his place in the chronicles of the order.
The emperor was conversing one day with his confessor, Regla, when that priest chose to speak, in the mitre-shunning cant of his cloth, of the great reluctance which he had felt in accepting a post of such weighty responsibility. "Never fear," said Charles, somewhat maliciously, and as if conscious that he was dealing with a hypocrite; "before I left Flanders, four doctors were engaged for a whole year in easing my conscience; so you have nothing to answer for but what happens here."
When he had completed a year of residence at the convent, some good-humored bantering passed between him and the master of the novices about its being now time for him to make profession; and he afterwards said thathe was prevented from taking the vows of the order, and becoming a monk in earnest, only by the state of his health. St. Blas's day, 1558, the anniversary of his arrival, was held as a festival, and celebrated by masses, theTe Deum, a precession by the fathers, and a sermon by Villalva. In the afternoon, the emperor gave a sumptuous repast to the whole convent, out in the fields, it being the custom of the fraternity to celebrate any accession to their number by a pic-nic. The country people about Plasencia sent a quantity of partridges and kids to aid the feast, which was likewise enlivened by the presence of the Flemish servants, male and female, and his other retainers, from the village of Quacos. The prior provided a more permanent memorial of the day by opening a new book for the names of brethren admitted into the convent, on the first leaf of which the emperor inscribed his name—an autograph which remained the pride of the archives till their destruction by the dragoons of Buonaparte.
The retired emperor had not many visitors in his solitude; and of these few, Juan de Vega, president of the council of Castille, was the only personage in high office. He was sent down by the princess-regent, apparently to see that her father was treated with due attention by the provincial authorities. But with his neighbors, great and small, Charles lived in a state of amity which it would have been well for the world had he been able to maintain with his fellow-potentates of Christendom. The few nobles and gentry of the Vera were graciously received when they came to pay their respects at Yuste. Oropesa and his brothers frequently rode forth from Xarandilla, to inquire after the health of their former guest. From Plasencia came a still more distinguished and no less welcome guest, Luis de Avila, comendador-mayor of Alcantara. Long thefidus Achatesof the emperor, this soldier-courtier had obtained considerable fame by becoming his Quintus Curtius. His Commentaries on the Wars against the Protestants of Germany, first published in 1546, had been several times reprinted, and had already been translated into Latin, French, Flemish, English, and Italian. Having married the wealthy heiress of the Zuñigas, he was now living in laurelled ease at Plasencia, in that fine palace of Mirabel, which is still one of the chief ornaments of the beautiful city. The memoirs of the campaigns in Africa, which he is said to have left in manuscript, were perhaps the occupation of his leisure. Charles always received his historian with kindness, and it is characteristic of the times, that it was noted as a mark of singular favor, that he ordered a capon to be reserved for him from his own well-supplied board. It may seem strange that a retired prince, who had never been a lover of parade, should not have broken through the ceremonial law which condemned a monarch to eat alone. But we must remember that he was a Spaniard living amongst Spaniards; and that, near a century later, the force of forms was still so strong, that the great minister of France, when most wanting in ships, preferred that the Spanish fleet should retire from the blockade of Rochelle rather than that the admiral should wear his grandee hat in the Most Christian presence.
The emperor was fond of talking over his feats of arms with the veteran who had shared and recorded them. One day, in the course of such conversation, Don Luis said he had caused a ceiling of his house to be painted in fresco, with a view of the battle of Renti, and the Frenchmen flying before the soldiers of Castille. "Not so," said Charles; "let the painter modify this if he can; for it was no headlong flight, but an honorable retreat." This was not the less candid, that French historians claim the victory for their own side. Considering that the action had been fought only three or four years before it was said to have been painted, it is possible that Renti has been substituted for the name of some other less doubtful field. But Luis de Avila was of easy faith when the honor of Castille was concerned, and may well be supposed capable of setting down a success to the wrong account, when he did not hesitate to record it in his book, that the miracle of Ajalon had been repeated at Muhlberg. Some years afterwards, the duke of Alva, who had been in that battle, was asked by the French king whether he had observed that the sun stood still. "I was so busy that day," said the old soldier, "with what was passing on earth, that I had no time to notice what took place in heaven."
An anecdote of Avila and his master, though not falling within the period of their retirement to Estremadura, may be related here, as serving to show the characters of the two men. Some years before his abdication, Charles had amused the leisure of his sick-room by making a prose translation of Olivier de la Marches' forgotten allegorical poem,Le Chevalier deliberé. He then employed Fernando de Acunha, a man of letters attached to the Saxon court, to turn his labors into Castillian verse, and he finally handed it over to William Van Male, one of the gentlemen of the chamber, telling him that he might publish it for his own benefit. Avila and the other Spaniards, hearing of the concession, wickedly affected the greatest envy at the good fortune of the Fleming; the historian, in particular, in his quality of author, assuring the emperor that the publication could not fail to realize a profit of five hundred crowns. That desire to print, which, more or less developed, exists in every man who writes, being thus stimulated by the suggestion, that to gratify that desire, would be to confer a favor which should cost him nothing, Charles became impatient to see his lucubrations in type. Insisting that his bounty should be accepted at once, he turned a deaf ear to the timid hints of Van Male, as to the risk and expense of the speculation; and the end was, that the poor man had to pay Jean Steels forprinting and publishing two thousand copies of a book which is now scarce, probably because the greater part of the impression passed at once from the publisher to the pastry-cook. The waggery on the part of Avila was the more wicked, because the victim had translated his Commentaries into Latin for him. It forms, however, the subject of an agreeable letter, wherein Van Male complains of the undue expectations raised in the emperor's mind by his "windy Spaniards," and ruefully looks forward to reaping a harvest of mere straw and chaff.
It was not only by calling at Yuste that the noble lieges of the emperor testified their homage. Mules were driven to his gate laden with more substantial tokens of loyalty and affection. The Count of Oropesa kept his table supplied with game from the forest and the hill; and the prelates of Toledo, Mondoñedo, Segovia, and Salamanca, offered similar proofs that they had not forgotten the giver of their mitres. The Jeromites of Guadalupe, rich in sheep and beeves, sent calves, lambs fattened on bread, and delicate fruits; and from his sister Catharine, queen of Portugal, there came every fortnight a supply of conserves and linen.
The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course, left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit. Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be light.
To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven, of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice. The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be punished with a hundred stripes.
In the month of September, 1557, the emperor received a visit from his sisters, the queens Eleanor and Mary. These royal widows, weary of Guadalaxara, its unyielding duke, and its troublesome alcalde, were once more in search of a residence. They had cast their eyes on the banks of the Guadiana, and they were now on their way to that frontier of Portugal. Neither the convent nor the palace of Yuste being sufficiently commodious to receive them, they lived at Xarandilla, as guests of Oropesa. The shattered health of the queen of France rendered the journey from the castle to the convent, although performed in a litter, so fatiguing to her, that she accomplished it only twice. Nor was her brother's strength sufficient to enable him to return the visits of his favorite sister. But queen Mary was seven years younger, and still possessed much of the vigor which amazed Roger Ascham, when he met her galloping into Tongres, far ahead of her suit, although it was the tenth day she had passed in the saddle. She therefore mounted her horse almost every day, and rode through the fading forest to converse with the recluse at Yuste. At the end of a fortnight, the queens took a sorrowful leave of their brother, and proceeded on their way to Badajoz, whither the Infanta Mary of Portugal, daughter of queen Eleanor, had come from Lisbon to receive them. After this meeting, which was destined to be the last, the queens returned to the little town of Talaverilla, on the bare plains of Merida, where they had determined to fix their abode. But they found there no continuing city. In a few weeks, Eleanor was seized with a fever, which carried her off on the 25th of February, 1558, the sixtieth year of her age. When the emperor heard of her illness, he dispatched Luis Quixada to attend upon her; but she was already at rest ere the mayordomo reached Talaverilla. Queen Mary went back with Quixada to Yuste. Her health being much shaken, and the emperor being unable to move from the convent, she was lodged, on this occasion, in his apartments. At the end of eight days she bade him a last farewell, and retired to Cigales, a hamlet two leagues north of Valladolid, and crowning a vine-clad hill on the western side of the valley of the Pisuerga.