utter darkness, and reeking with moisture; the garden was paltry, the orange-trees few, and the boasted prospect, what was it, but a hill and some oak trees? Nevertheless, he hoped the place might prove better than it promised; and he entreated the secretary not to show his letter to her highness, nor to tell her of the disparaging tone in which he had written about Yuste. Gaztelu was equally desponding. Some of the friars were to be drafted off into other convents, to make room for the new comers; and none being willing to forego the chances of imperial favour, fierce dissensions had arisen on this point, and had even reached the emperor's ears. It seemed as if his majesty must adjust these quarrels himself, or seek another retreat, which would be much against his inclination; but, indeed, what good could be expected to come of wishing to live among friars? The quartermaster, Ruggier, in reporting progress, had ventured to complain of the want of servants' accommodation. At this the emperor was very angry, and telling him that he wanted his service and not his advice, said he must find means of lodging twenty-one of the people at Yuste, and the rest at Quacos, a place,' added Gaztelu piteously, 'worse than Xarandilla.' Still more was the emperor exasperated at a letter which he received from the queen of Hungary, entreating him to think twice before he settled in a spot so unhealthy as Yuste;' and he expressed great wrath against those who had given her such information, and whom he suspected to be Monsieur de La Chaulx and the doctor Cornelio, who had lately come from court. Poor La Chaulx might well be excused if he had given an unfavourable report of the climate; he was not the man he had been when he led the ball at the emperor's wedding, in the Alcazar at Seville; and he continued to burn and shiver with violent ague fits. The doctor found a good many patients in the lower ranks of the household. In spite, however, of these various distresses, the Flemings, according to the testimony of the Castillians, looked fair and fat, and fed voraciously on the hams and other bucolic meats' of Estremadura, a province still unrivalled in swine and savoury preparations of pork. In this matter of eating, as in many other habits, the emperor was himself a true Fleming. His early tendency to gout was increased by his indulgences at table, which generally far exceeded his feeble powers of digestion. Roger Ascham, standing 'hard by the imperial table at the feast of Golden fleece,' watched with wonder the emperor's progress through 'sod beef, roast mutton, baked hare,' after which he fed well of a capon,' drinking, also, says the fellow of St. John's, 'the best that ever I saw; he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of them, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine." Even in his worst days of gout and dyspepsia, before setting out from Flanders, the fulness and frequency of the meals which occurred between his spiced milk in the morning and his heavy supper at night, so amazed an envoy of Venice," that he thought them worthy of especial notice in his despatch to the senate. The emperor's palate, he reported, was, like his stomach, quite worn out; he was ever complaining of the sameness and insipidity of the meats served at his table; and the chamberlain, Monfalconet, protested, in despair, that he knew not how the cook was to please his master, unless he were to gratify his taste for culinary novelty and chronometrical mechanism, by sending him up a pasty of watches. 1 Works of Roger Ascham, 4to. London: 1761, p. 375. Eating was now the only physical gratification which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. Like Frederick the Great, who died of his polenta, he continued, therefore, to dine to the last upon the rich dishes, against which his ancient and trusty confessor, cardinal Loaysa, had protested a quarter of a century before.' The supply of his table was a main subject of the correspondence between the mayordomo and the secretary of state. The weekly courier from Valladolid to Lisbon was ordered to change his route that he might bring, every Thursday a provision of eels and other rich fish (pescado grueso) for Friday's fast. There was a constant demand for anchovies, tunny, and other potted fish, and sometimes a complaint that the trouts of the country were too small; the olives, on the other hand, were too large, and the emperor wished, instead, for olives of Perejon. One day, the secretary of state was asked for some partridges from Gama, a place from whence the emperor remembered that the count of Osorno once sent him, into Flanders, 'some of the best partridges in the world." Another day, sausages were wanted 'of the kind which the queen Juana, now in glory, used to pride herself in making, in the Flemish fashion, at Tordesillas,' and for the receipt for which the secretary is referred to the marquis of Denia. Both orders were punctually executed. The sausages, although sent to a land supreme in that manufacture, gave great satisfaction. Of the partridges, the emperor said that they used to be better, ordering, however, the remainder to be pickled. Cartas al Emp. Carlos V. escritas en los años de 1530-32. Copiadas de las autografas en el archivo de Simancas. Par G. Heine. 8vo. Berlin, 1848, p. 69. 2 The count managed that they should reach Flanders in perfect condition by putting rust in their mouths, 'echandoles orin en la boca.' The emperor considered that this singular preservative would not be neces sary in the present journey. The emperor's weakness being generally known or soon discovered, dainties of all kinds were sent to him as presents. Mutton, pork, and game were the provisions most easily obtained at Xarandilla; but they were dear. The bread was indifferent, and nothing was good and abundant but chestnuts, the staple food of the people. But in a very few days the castle larder wanted for nothing. One day the count of Oropesa sent an offering of game; another day, a pair of fat calves arrived from the archbishop of Zaragoza; the archbishop of Toledo and the duchess of Frias were constant and magnificent in their gifts of venison, fruit, and preserves; and supplies of all kinds came at regular intervals from Seville and from Portugal. Luis Quixada, who knew the emperor's habits and constitution well, beheld with dismay these long trains of mules laden, as it were, with gout and bile. He never acknowledged the receipt of the good things from Valladolid without adding some dismal forebodings of consequent mischief; and along with an order he sometimes. conveyed a hint that it would be much better if no means were found of executing it. If the emperor made a hearty meal without being the worse for it, the mayordomo noted the fact with exultation; and he remarked with complacency his majesty's fondness for plovers. which he considered harmless. But his office of purveyor was more commonly exercised under protest; and he interposed between his master and an eel-pie as, in other days, he would have thrown himself between the imperial person and the point of a Moorish lance. CHAPTER IV. SERVANTS AND VISITORS. T was during the emperor's stay at Xarandilla, that IT his household was joined by the friar of the order of St. Jerome, whom he had chosen as his confessor. To this important post Juan de Regla was perhaps fairly entitled, by his professional distinction; and he was certainly one of those monks who knew how to make ladders, to place and favour, of the ropes which girt their ascetic loins. An Aragonese by birth, he first saw the light in a peasant's hut on the mountains of Jaca, in 1500, the same year in which the future Cæsar, who was destined to be his spiritual son, was born, in the halls of the house of Burgundy, in the good city of Ghent. At fourteen, he was sent to Zaragoza, to make one of the motley crew of poor scholars, so often the glory and the shame of the Spanish church, and the delight of the picaresque literature. Obtaining as he could the rudiments of what was then held to be learning, he lived on alms and the charity-soup dispensed by the Jeromites of Santa Engracia. During the vacations, by carrying letters or messages, sometimes as far as Barcelona, Valencia, or Madrid, he earned a little money, which he spent in books. His diligent pursuit of knowledge having attracted the notice of the fathers of Santa Engracia, their favour obtained for him the post of domestic tutor to two lads of family, who were about to enter the university of Salamanca, In that congenial |