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belong to the blood. Protestant and catholic, huguenot and leaguer by turns, he anticipated in his career all that tarnished, little that ennobled, the name of his son Henry the Fourth; and he died detested by the party which he had forsaken, and described, by the party to which he had attached himself, as a man without heart and without gall. As governor of Picardy, he had lately commanded against the imperial troops in Flanders; but he had now joined his strong-minded wife, Jane D'Albret, in her principality of Bearne. Menaced even in that modest domain by the all-powerful Guises, who recommended its annexation to the realm of France, they were desirous of securing the protection of their other great neighbour beyond the Pyrenees. Anthony had therefore proposed to cede to the king of Spain, for a suitable consideration, all his wife's rights to coronation or to interment at Pamplona.

He

Writing to Philip the Second, the emperor informed him that this matter had been brought under his notice at Burgos, by the duke of Alburquerque, viceroy of Navarre, and that he had given audience to Monsieur Ezcurra, the confidential agent of the duke of Vendome. The subject had also been discussed at Valladolid. had refused, however, to enter upon the affair, and left it entirely in the king's hands. He hoped that the prince of Orange and the chancellor had come to a settlement with the king of the Romans, as to the last formalities of his renunciation of the empire; and he entreated Philip to hasten the settlement by all the means in his power, being anxious to enter his monastery 'free from this, as from other cares.'

While Charles was thus bent on conventual quiet, he was so reserved in his communications with his attendants, that they were still in doubt whether he

really intended to shut himself up for life in the distant cloister of Yuste. From Burgos, Gaztelu wrote, that in spite of his constant opportunities, he was unable to penetrate the emperor's intentions-the expressions which he let fall being always, as it seemed, purposely equivocal. At Valladolid, however, he had commanded. the attendance of the prior of Yuste, and the general of the order of Jerome, Fray Francisco de Tofiño; and he gave audience so frequently to these friars, that the Flemings must have begun to despair of escaping the backwoods of Estremadura.

The acquaintance of the emperor and his grandson, Don Carlos, which commenced at Cabezon, was of course improved at Valladolid. On the grandfather's side, there seems to have been little of the fondness which usually belongs to the relationship. Although only eleven years old, 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 sad and early death, still mysterious both in its cause and its circumstances, has made him the darling of romance; and in that fairy realm, he goes crowned with immortal garlands, such as certainly have never been won in the battle-fields of life by any son or descendant of his sire. He might possibly have become the champion of the people's rights, and of liberty of conscience; but it was scarcely probable that a hero of that order should be borne in the purple of the house of Hapsburg. His shadowy claims to the title have been

maintained by several Schiller-struck champions.' But his high faculties for good or evil, if he possessed them, certainly escaped the shrewd insight of his grandfather, who regarded him merely as a froward and untractable child, whose future interests would be best served by a present unsparing use of the rod. Recommending, therefore, to the princess an increased severity of discipline in the management of her nephew, the emperor remarked to his sisters that he had observed with coucern the boy's unpromising conduct and manners, and that it was very doubtful how the man would grow up. This opinion was conveyed by queen Eleanor to Philip the Second, who had requested his aunt to note carefully the impression made by his son; and it is said to have laid the foundation for the aversion which the king entertained towards Carlos.

Of these, one of the latest and most plausible in his view is Don Adolfo de Castro. See his agreeable work, Historia de los Protestantes Españoles, 8vo, Cadiz, 1851, pp. 243-319, or The Spanish Protestants, translated by T. Parker, fcap. 8vo. London: 1851, pp. 278 to 339, in which, however, I cannot admit that he makes out his case.

J

CHAPTER III.

THE CASTLE OF XARANDILLA.

NCE the emperor had turned fifty and had begun

SINCE

to lose his teeth, he had ceased to eat in public, or at least performed that royal function in private as often as good policy permitted.' On the fourth of November he exhibited himself at table to his subjects for the last time, dining about noon before as many of the citizens of Valladolid as chose to attend and could find standing room in the apartment. Immediately afterwards he bade farewell to the princess-regent and her nephew, and set forward on his journey to Estremadura, dismissing, at the Campo-gate, a crowd of grandees who had wished to ride for some miles beside his litter.

The followers whom he had brought from Burgos continued to attend him, with a small escort of horse and a company of forty halberdiers commanded by a lieutenant. They had not gone far over the naked plain, patched here and there with stubby vineyards, when the emperor complained of illness, and halted his litter. His servants retired with him into a wayside garden, and by the application of hot cushions to his stomach, he was soon sufficiently restored to proceed. At the ferry of the broad Duero he looked towards the fortress of Simancas, which rose on its round hill top out of the plain a few miles higher up the river, and

'Joan Gin. Sepulveda; De Rebus gestis Caroli V. Lib. xxx. c. 25. Opera, 4 tom. 4° Madriti 1780, ii. p. 528.

remarked to Quixada that he hoped the thirty thousand ducats, with which he counted upon paying his people, had been lodged there in safety. The day's march of four leagues closed at Valdestillas, a village seated amongst low woods of melancholy pine.

The next day's journey, which was somewhat shorter, brought the party to Medina del Campo, a fine old historical town in a singularly bad site, with a grand collegiate church presiding over many other religious buildings, and a noble hospital, well supplied with patients by the miasma which rose from the stagnating Zapardiel that crept beneath the walls. Here was an ancient residence of the crown of Castile, called La Mota, a stately pile hallowed by the death-bed of Isabella the Catholic. The emperor, however, was not lodged there, but in the house of one Rodrigo de Dueñas, a rich money-broker, whither he was conducted by the authorities and by most of the inhabitants, who had met him at the gate. His host, imitating, perhaps, unconsciously, the splendid Fuggers of Augsburg, had provided, amongst other luxuries for the emperor's use, a chafing-dish of gold, filled, not with the usual charred vine-tendrils, but with the finest cinnamon of Ceylon. Charles was so displeased with this piece of ostentation, that he refused, very uncourteously and unreasonably as it seems, to allow the poor capitalist to kiss his hand, and on going away next day, ordered his night's lodging to be paid for. From Medina he privately sent one of his chaplains to Tordesillas to observe the state and service of the chapel which he had endowed there for the benefit of the souls of his parents.

In the course of the third day's march he remarked to his attendants that, thank God! they were now

This story is told by Gonzalez ; but whether on the authority of a letter does not appear.

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