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and when the emperor had prostrated himself before the altar, the monks gathered round him, anxious to pay him their respectful obeisance. Charles received them graciously, and, after examining his quarters, professed himself well pleased with the accommodations prepared for him. His was not a fickle temper. Slow in forming his plans, he was slower in changing them. To the last day of his residence at Yuste—whatever may have been said to the contrary—he seems to have been well satisfied with the step he had taken and with the spot he had selected.

      HIS MODE OF LIFE.

      From the first, he prepared to conform, as far as his health would permit, to the religious observances of the monastery. Not that he proposed to limit himself to the narrow circumstances of an ordinary friar. The number of his retinue that still remained with him was at least fifty, mostly Flemings;[289] a number not greater, certainly, than that maintained by many a private gentleman of the country. But among these we recognize those officers of state who belong more properly to a princely establishment than to the cell of the recluse. There was the major-domo, the almoner, the keeper of the wardrobe, the keeper of the jewels, the chamberlains, two watchmakers, several secretaries, the physician, the confessor, besides cooks, confectioners, bakers, brewers, game-keepers, and numerous valets. Some of these followers seem not to have been quite so content as their master with their secluded way of life, and to have cast many a longing look to the pomps and vanities of the world they had left behind them. At least such were the feelings of Quixada, the emperor's major-domo, in whom he placed the greatest confidence, and who had the charge of his household. "His majesty's bedroom," writes the querulous functionary, "is good enough; but the view from it is poor—barren mountains, covered with rocks and stunted oaks; a garden of moderate size, with a few straggling orange-trees; the roads scarcely passable, so steep and stony; the only water, a torrent rushing from the mountains; a dreary solitude!" The low, cheerless rooms, he predicts, must necessarily be damp, boding no good to the emperor's infirmity.[290] "As to the friars," observes the secretary, Gaztelu, in the same amiable mood, "please God that his majesty may be able to tolerate them—which will be no easy matter; for they are an importunate race."[291] It is evident that Charles's followers would have been very willing to exchange the mortifications of the monastic life for the good cheer and gaiety of Brussels.

      The worthy prior of the convent, in addressing Charles, greeted him with the title of paternidad, till one of the fraternity suggested to him the propriety of substituting that of magestad.[292] Indeed, to this title Charles had good right, for he was still emperor. His resignation of the imperial crown, which, as we have seen, so soon followed that of the Spanish, had not taken effect, in consequence of the diet not being in session at the time when his envoy, the prince of Orange, was to have presented himself at Ratisbon, in the spring of 1557. The war with France made Philip desirous that his father should remain lord of Germany for some time longer. It was not, therefore, until more than a year after Charles's arrival at Yuste, that the resignation was accepted by the diet, at Frankfort, on the twenty-eighth of February, 1558. Charles was still emperor, and continued to receive the imperial title in all his correspondence.[293]

      We have pretty full accounts of the manner in which the monarch employed his time. He attended mass every morning in the chapel, when his health permitted. Mass was followed by dinner, which he took early and alone, preferring this to occupying a seat in the refectory of the convent. He was fond of carving for himself, though his gouty fingers were not always in the best condition for this exercise.[294] His physician was usually in attendance during the repast, and might, at least, observe how little his patient, who had not the virtue of abstinence, regarded his prescriptions. The Fleming, Van Male, the emperor's favorite gentleman of the chamber, was also not unfrequently present. He was a good scholar; and his discussions with the doctor served to beguile the tediousness of their master's solitary meal. The conversation frequently turned on some subject of natural history, of which the emperor was fond; and when the parties could not agree, the confessor, a man of learning, was called in to settle the dispute.

      After dinner—an important meal, which occupied much time with Charles—he listened to some passages from a favorite theologian. In his worldly days, the book he most affected is said to have been Comines's Life of Louis the Eleventh,[295]—a prince whose maxim, "Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare," was too well suited to the genius of the emperor. He now, however, sought a safer guide for his spiritual direction, and would listen to a homily from the pages of St. Bernard, or more frequently St. Augustine, in whom he most delighted.[296] Towards evening, he heard a sermon from one of his preachers. Three or four of the most eloquent of the Jeronymite order had been brought to Yuste for his especial benefit. When he was not in condition to be present at the discourse, he expected to hear a full report of it from the lips of his confessor, Father Juan de Regla. Charles was punctual in his attention to all the great fasts and festivals of the Church. His infirmities, indeed, excused him from fasting, but he made up for it by the severity of his flagellation. In Lent, in particular, he dealt with himself so sternly, that the scourge was found stained with his blood; and this precious memorial of his piety was ever cherished, we are told, by Philip, and by him bequeathed as an heirloom to his son.[297]

      Increasing vigilance in his own spiritual concerns made him more vigilant as to those of others—as the weaker brethren sometimes found to their cost. Observing that some of the younger friars spent more time than was seemly in conversing with the women who came on business to the door of the convent, Charles procured an order to be passed, that any woman who ventured to approach within two bowshots of the gate should receive a hundred stripes.[298] On another occasion, his officious endeavor to quicken the diligence of one of the younger members of the fraternity is said to have provoked the latter testily to exclaim, "Cannot you be contented with having so long turned the world upside down, without coming here to disturb the quiet of a poor convent?"

      HIS MODE OF LIFE.

      He derived an additional pleasure, in his spiritual exercises, from his fondness for music, which enters so largely into those of the Romish Church. He sung well himself, and his clear, sonorous voice might often be heard through the open casement of his bedroom, accompanying the chant of the monks in the chapel. The choir was made up altogether of brethren of the order, and Charles would allow no intrusion from any other quarter. His ear was quick to distinguish any strange voice, as well as any false note in the performance—on which last occasion he would sometimes pause in his devotions, and, in half-suppressed tones, give vent to his anger by one of those scurrilous epithets, which, however they may have fallen in with the habits of the old campaigner, were but indifferently suited to his present way of life.[299]

      Such time as was not given to his religious exercises was divided among various occupations, for which he had always had a relish, though hitherto but little leisure to pursue them. Besides his employments in his garden, he had a decided turn for mechanical pursuits. Some years before, while in Germany, he had invented an ingenious kind of carriage for his own accommodation.[300] He brought with him to Yuste an engineer named Torriano, famous for the great hydraulic works he constructed in Toledo. With the assistance of this man, a most skilful mechanician, Charles amused himself by making a variety of puppets representing soldiers, who went through military exercises. The historian draws largely on our faith, by telling us also of little wooden birds which the ingenious pair contrived, so as to fly in and out of the window before the admiring monks![301] But nothing excited their astonishment so much as a little hand-mill, used for grinding wheat, which turned out meal enough in a single day to support a man for a week or more. The good fathers thought this savored of downright necromancy; and it may have furnished an argument against the unfortunate engineer in the persecution which he afterwards underwent from the Inquisition.

      Charles took, moreover, great interest in the mechanism of timepieces. He had a good number of clocks and watches ticking together in his apartments; and a story has obtained credit, that the difficulty he found in making any two of them keep the same time drew from him an exclamation on the folly of attempting to bring a number of men to think alike in matters of religion, when he could not regulate any two of his timepieces so as to make them agree with each other; a philosophical reflection for which one will hardly give credit to the man who, with his dying words, could press on his son the maintenance of the Inquisition as the great bulwark of the Catholic faith. In the gardens of Yuste there is

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