abode he remained for thirteen years, in the last six of which he was released from the duties of pedagogue, and free to pursue his private reading of theology, canonlaw, and the biblical tongues. With his mind thus stored, he returned, in his thirty-sixth year, to Zaragoza, and received the habit of St. Jerome in the familiar cloisters of Santa Engracia. Ere long, he had made himself the most popular confessor within its walls, young and old flocking to his chair in such crowds, that it seemed as if perpetual holy-week were kept in the convent-church. As a preacher, his success was not so great; and the critics considered his discourses to be deficient in learning, of which, nevertheless, he had enough to be chosen as one of the theologians, sent in 1551 by Charles the Fifth to represent the doctors of Aragon at the council of Trent. At his return from this honourable, but fruitless mission, he became prior of the convent whose broken meat he had once eaten; and he would have been elected to that office a second time, had not the emperor summoned him to Xarandilla to commence a higher career of ambition, and to enter political life at the precise age at which Charles himself was retiring from it. On being introduced into the imperial presence, Regla chose to speak, in the mitreshunning 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, as if conscious that he was dealing with a hypocrite; 'before I left Flanders, five doctors were engaged for a whole year in easing my conscience; so you will have nothing to answer for but what happens here.'

It may be as well now to sketch the portraits of the other members of the imperial household, who afterwards formed the principal personages of the tiny court of Yuste. Foremost in interest as in rank stands

1

the active mayordomo, who has already figured so frequently in this narrative, Luis Quixada, or to give him his full Castillian appellation, Luis Mendez Quixada Manuel de Figueredo y Mendoza. He was the last of a knightly race of Old Castille, whose martial achievements, says one of its admirers, deserve to be written with a pen plucked from the wing of the eagle that soared, in battle, over the head of Alexander.' The first recorded warrior of the line was Ruy Arias Quixada, who fought in 1085 under the king Don Alonso the Sixth, at the taking of Toledo. From that siege to Isabella's crowning conquest of Granada, there was hardly a field fought in Spain where the pennon, chequered azure and argent, of a Quixada, was not displayed among the foremost banners of the Christian host. Gutierre Gonçalez Quixada, lord of Villagarcia, was distinguished by his prowess in the tournays, and his favour at the court of Philip the First, or the Handsome. He served with distinction in the conquest of Navarre, and in the wars of the Commons of Castille; and as a leader of the famous infantry of Spain, he became so renowned, that it was sufficient praise for soldiers in that service to be called as well trained and as well appointed as the soldiers of Gutierre Quixada. By his wife, Maria Manuel, lady of Villamayor, he had four sons and a daughter. Of these children, three embraced the profession of arms; Alvaro entered the church, and died in 1554, a dignitary of Santiago; and Anna was for many years abbess of Las Huelgas, at Valladolid. Pedro, the eldest son, being slain before Tunis, in 1535, the family estates passed shortly afterwards, on the death of his father,

'Juan de Villafañe: Vida de Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, 4to. Salamanca: 1728. p. 16.

F

to the second son Luis. Commencing his career as a page in the imperial household, Luis had likewise served with distinction in the same campaign as a captain of foot. His sagacity allayed the discord which had arisen between the Spanish and Italians about the post of honour before Goleta;' and he was wounded while leading his company to the assault of its bastions. At Terouanne, in the Netherlands, he was again at the head of a storming party, when his younger brother Juan fell at his side, slain by a ball from a French arquebus.3 His services soon raised him to the grade of colonel, and he was also promoted, in the imperial household, to the post of deputy mayordomo, under the duke of Alba, and in that capacity constantly attended the person and obtained the entire confidence of the emperor. In 1549, he married Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, a lady of blood as blue and nature as gentle as any in Castille. The marriage took place at Valladolid, the bridegroom appearing by proxy, but he soon after obtained leave of absence from Bruxelles, and joined his bride in Spain. They retired for awhile to his patrimonial mansion at Villagarcia, a small town lying six leagues from Valladolid, beyond the heath of San Pedro de la Espina, in the vale of the Sequillo.

To Quixada's care the emperor afterwards confided his illegitimate son, in later years so famous as Don John of Austria. The boy was sent to Spain in 1550, in his fourth year, under the name of Geronimo, in the charge of one Massi, a favourite musician of the emperor, who was told that he was the son of Adrian

1 Sandoval: Hist. de Carlos V., lib. xxii. c. 17.

3

2 Ib. c. 27.

3 J. G. Sepulveda: De Rebus gestis Caroli V., lib. xxviii. c. 27. Villafañe: Vida de Doña Mag. de Ulloa. p. 43.

de Bues, one of the gentlemen of the imperial chamber.' At this man's death, he remained for some time with his widow at Leganes, near Madrid, learning his letters from the curate and sacristan, running wild among the village children, or with his cross-bow ranging the cornclad plains in pursuit of sparrows. It was not until 1554 that he was transferred to the more fitting guardianship of the lady of Villagarcia; the imperial usher who brought him, bringing her also a letter from Quixada, commending the young stranger to her care as 'the son of a great man, his dear friend.' Magdalena, who had no children of her own, took the pretty sunburnt boy at once to her heart, and watched over him with the tenderest solicitude; supposing, for some time, that he was the offspring of some early attachment of her lord. A fire breaking out in the house at midnight, Quixada by rushing to the rescue of his ward before he attended to the safety of his wife, led her afterwards to suspect the truth. But as long as the emperor lived,

With the emperor's will was deposited in the royal archives a packet of four papers, which appears to have been at first in the custody of Philip II., being inscribed in his hand-writing, 'If I die before his majesty, to be returned to him; if after him to be given to my son; or, failing him, my next heir.' In the first of these papers, the contents of which will be noticed more particularly in another place, the emperor acknowledged Geronimo to be his son, begotten, during his widowhood, of an unmarried woman in Germany, and referred his heir for further information concerning him to Adrian de Bues; or, in case of his death, to Oger Bodoarte, porter of the imperial chamber. Inside this document was the receipt granted by Massi, his wife Ana de Medina, and their son Diego, for the son of Adrian de Bues; and a sum of one hundred crowns to defray his travelling expenses to Spain, and one year's board and lodging, calculated from the 1st of August, 1550, and binding themselves to accept fifty ducats for his annual keep in future, and to preserve the strictest secrecy as to his parentage. This curious receipt is dated Bruxelles, 13 June, 1550, and is signed by the parties, Oger Bodoarte signing for the woman, at her husband's request, she being unable to write. The documents are printed at full length in the Papiers de Granvelle, iv. 496.

Villafañe: Vida de M. de Ulloa, p. 43.

the mayordomo never suffered her to penetrate the mystery. Amongst the neighbours Don John passed for a favourite page. The parental care of his guardians, whom he called, according to a usual mode of Castillian endearment, his uncle and aunt, he returned with the affection of a son. Doña Magdalena used to make him the dispenser of the alms of bread and money, which were given at her gate on stated days to the poor; and her 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 every galley in his fleet at Lepanto. In the early part of his education, Quixada had but little share, being generally absent in attendance on the emperor. During his brief visits to his estate, he lived the usual life of a country hidalgo, amusing himself with the chase and law, flying his hawks and carrying on a tedious plea with his tenants about manorial rights, in which he was ultimately defeated. Strongly attached to his paternal fields on the naked plains of Old Castille, although he may have been content to exchange them for the active life of the camp or the court, it was not without many a pang that he prepared for his banishment to the wilds of Estremadura. Unconsciously portrayed in his own graphic letters, the best of the Yuste correspondence, he stands forth the type of the cavalier, and 'old rusty Christian," of Castille-spare and sinewy of frame, and somewhat formal and severe in the cut of his beard and the fashion of his manners; in character reserved and punctilious, but true as steel to the cause espoused or the duty undertaken; keen and clear in his insight into

1 'Cristiano viejo rancioso,' Don Quixote, p. i. cap. xxvii., so translated by Shelton.