and he so eclipsed his colleagues, that they seem to have been seldom called to the pulpit except during a few weeks when Charles, at the urgent request of the city of Zaragoza, spared him for awhile to his old admirers. Fray Juan de Açoloras, a monk from the great convent of Our Lady of Prado, near Valladolid, was also an eminent divine and schoolman, and he had so successfully combatted the harsh tone and accent of his native Biscay, that his delivery in the pulpit was considered as a model of grace. Fray Juan de Santandres, from the convent of Santa Catalina, at Talavera, was less eloquent than his compeers, but highly esteemed for purity of doctrine and life. Besides these regular and retained ministers, any Jeromite with a reputation for preaching who chanced to pass that way, was sure of an invitation to display his powers before the emperor at Yuste. The simple and regular habits of Charles accorded well with the monotony of monastic life. Every morning, father Regla appeared at his bed-side to inquire how he had passed the night, and to assist him in his private devotions. Mathys, the doctor, was next admitted; and Torriano the mechanician was also an early visitor.' The emperor then rose and was dressed by his valets; after which he heard mass, going down, when his health permitted, into the church. According to his invariable custom, which in Italy was said to have given rise to the saying, dalla messa, alla mensa, from mass to mess, he went from these devotions to dinner about noon. The meal was long; for his appetite was voracious; his hands were so disabled with gout, that carving, which he nevertheless insisted on doing for himself, was a tedious 1 M. Bakhuizen van den Brink, Retraite de Charles V., p. 33, says that Torriano was the first person who entered the imperial bed-chamber : but I prefer the more probable account of Siguença. process; and even mastication was slow and difficult, his teeth being so few and far between. The physician attended him at table, and at least learned the causes of the mischief which his art was to counteract. The patient, while he dined, conversed with the doctor on matters of science, generally of natural history; and if any difference of opinion arose, father Regla was sent for to settle the point out of Pliny. The cloth being drawn, the confessor usually read aloud from one of the emperor's favourite divines, Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard, an exercise which was followed by conversation, and an hour of slumber. At three o'clock the monks were mustered in the convent to hear a sermon delivered by one of the imperial preachers, or a passage read by Fray Bernardino de Salinas from the Bible, frequently from the epistle to the Romans, the book which the emperor preferred. To these discourses or readings Charles always listened with profound attention; and if sickness or business compelled him to be absent, 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 was devoted to seeing the official people 'from court, or to the transaction of business with his secretary. Sometimes the workshop of Torriano was the resource of the emperor's spare time. He was very fond of clocks and watches, and curious in reckoning to a fraction the hours of his retired leisure. The Lombard had long been at work upon an elaborate astronomical timepiece, which was to perform not only the ordinary duties of a clock, but to tell the days of the month and year, and to denote the movements of the planets. In this delicate labour the mechanician advanced as slowly as the doctors of Trent in the construction of their system of theology. Twenty years had elapsed since he had first conceived the idea, and the actual execution cost him three years and a half. Indeed, the work had not received the last touches at the time of the emperor's death. Of wheels alone it contained eighteen hundred; the material of the case was gilt bronze, and its form round, about two feet in diameter, and somewhat less in height, with a tapering top, which ended in a tower containing the bell and hammer. Charles was greatly pleased with the ingenious toy; he inquired what inscription the maker intended to put upon it; and being told that nothing had been contemplated beyond the words, IANNELLVS. TVRRIANVS. CREMONENSIS. HOROLOGIORVM . ARCHITECTOR.added FACILE. PRINCEPS. which accordingly made part of the epigraph. On the back of the clock Juanelo caused his own portrait to be graven, encircling it with a legend, less in accordance with his original modest intentions than with the emperor's laudatory amendment, qvI. SIM. SCIES SI. PAR. OPVS . FACERE. CONABERIS. He likewise made for the emperor a smaller clock, less multiform and ambitious in its functions, and inclosed in a case of crystal, which allowed the working of the machinery to be seen, and suggested the mottoVT. ME. FVGIENTEM. AGNOSCAM. He also constructed a self-acting mill, which, though small enough to be hidden in a friar's sleeve, could grind two pecks of corn in a day; and the figure of a lady who danced on the table to the sounds of her own tambourine.' Other puppets were also attributed to him, minute men and horses which fought, and pranced, and blew tiny trumpets, and birds which flew about the room 1 Ambrosio de Morales: Antiguedades de España, fol. Alcala de Henares: 1575, fol. 93. Morales knew Torriano well, and appears to have seen the clock which he so minutely describes, although he does not say where it was ultimately placed. as if alive; toys which, at first, scared the prior and his monks out of their wits, and for awhile gained the artificer the dangerous fame of a wizard.' Sometimes the emperor fed his pet birds, which appear to have succeeded in his affections the stately wolf-hounds that followed at his heel in the days when he sat to Titian; or he sauntered among his trees and flowers, down to the little summer-house looking out upon the Vera; or sometimes, but more rarely, he strolled into the forest with his gun, and shot a few of the wood-pigeons which peopled the great chestnut trees. His out-door exercise was always taken on foot, or, if the gout forbade, in his chair or litter; 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.2 Such was the last appearance in the saddle of the accomplished cavalier, of whom his soldiers 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 on the bay charger presented to him by our bluff king Hal,* won, at Calais-gate, the applause of the English knights fresh from those tournays,— Where England vied with France in pride on the famous field of gold. Next came vespers; and after vespers supper, a meal very much like the dinner, consisting frequently of pickled salmon and other unwholesome dishes, which made Quixada's loyal heart quake within him. 1 Strada: De Bello Belg., lib. i. 2 Sandoval: Hist. de Carlos V., ii. p. 825. and Siguença, iii. p. 192, whence many of these details are taken. 3 J. A. Vera y Figueroa: Vida del Emp. Carlos V., 4to. Brussels : 1656, p. 263. • Stow's Annals, fol. London: 1631, p. 511. CHAPTER VI. STATE-CRAFT IN THE CLOISTER. DIMLY seen over mist, Yuste had appeared to the IMLY seen over the wintry woodlands, and through household at Xarandilla a place of penance; but their dismal forebodings were by no means realized in their new quarters on the fresh hill-side, bright with the sunshine of the budding spring. Writing on the day of the emperor's arrival there, Monsieur de La Chaulx complained of nothing but the Jeromite neighbours. 'His majesty,' he said, 'was delighted with the place, and still more were the friars delighted to see him among them, an event which they had almost ceased to hope for. May it please God that he shall find them endurable, for they are ever apt to be importunate, especially those who are such blockheads as some of the fraternity here seem to be.' La Chaulx himself had apparently recovered from his ague, and become reconciled to the climate of Estremadura, for being one of the chamberlains who had been placed on the retired list, he made the pilgrimage to Guadalupe, and afterwards resided for a few weeks on a commandery of Alcantara which he enjoyed in the province. He was afterwards chosen by the emperor as his envoy to the queen of England, and set out on that mission about the middle of March, with letters in which Charles assured Mary that although his retreat was all he could wish it, he would not, in taking his own ease, fail to assist by word and deed such measures as might be necessary for |