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History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, Vols. 1 and 2. William Hickling Prescott
Читать онлайн.Название History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, Vols. 1 and 2
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isbn 4057664564894
Автор произведения William Hickling Prescott
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
Thus Charles's nerves were kept in a state of perpetual excitement. No wonder that his health should have sunk under it; like a plant forced by extraordinary stimulants to an unnatural production at the expense of its own vitality.
His habits were not all of them the most conducive to health. He slept usually only four hours; too short a time to repair the waste caused by incessant toil.[350] His phlegmatic temperament did not incline him to excess. Yet there was one excess of which he was guilty—the indulgence of his appetite to a degree most pernicious to his health. A Venetian contemporary tells us, that, before rising in the morning, potted capon was usually served to him, dressed with sugar, milk, and spices. At noon he dined on a variety of dishes. Soon after vespers he took another meal; and later in the evening supped heartily on anchovies, or some other gross and savory food of which he was particularly fond.[351] On one occasion, complaining to his maître d'hôtel that the cook sent him nothing but dishes too insipid and tasteless to be eaten, the perplexed functionary, knowing Charles's passion for timepieces, replied, that "he did not know what he could do, unless it were to serve his majesty a ragout of watches!" The witticism had one good effect, that of provoking a hearty laugh from the emperor—a thing rarely witnessed in his latter days.[352]
It was in vain that Cardinal Loaysa, his confessor, remonstrated, with an independence that does him credit, against his master's indulgence of his appetite, assuring him that resistance here would do more for his soul than any penance with the scourge.[353] It seems a pity that Charles, considering his propensities, should have so easily obtained absolution from fasts, and that he should not, on the contrary, have transferred some of the penance which he inflicted on his back to the offending part. Even in the monastery of Yuste he still persevered in the same pernicious taste. Anchovies, frogs' legs, and eel-pasties were the dainty morsels with which he chose to be regaled, even before the eyes of his physician. It would not have been amiss for him to have exchanged his solitary repast more frequently for the simpler fare of the refectory.
With these coarser tastes Charles combined many others of a refined and intellectual character. We have seen his fondness for music, and the delight he took in the sister art of design—especially in the works of Titian. He was painted several times by this great master, and it was by his hand, as we have seen, that he desired to go down to posterity. The emperor had, moreover, another taste, perhaps talent, which, with a different training and in a different sphere of life, might have led him to the craft of authorship.
A curious conversation is reported as having been held by him with Borja, the future saint, during one of the visits paid by the Jesuit to Yuste. Charles inquired of his friend whether it were wrong for a man to write his autobiography, provided he did so honestly, and with no motive of vanity. He said that he had written his own memoirs, not from the desire of self-glorification, but to correct manifold mistakes which had been circulated of his doings, and to set his conduct in a true light.[354] One might be curious to know the answer, which is not given, of the good father to this question. It is to be hoped that it was not of a kind to induce the emperor to destroy the manuscript, which has never come to light.
However this may be, there is no reason to doubt that at one period of his life he had compiled a portion of his autobiography. In the imperial household, as I have already noticed, was a Flemish scholar, William Van Male, or Malinæus, as he is called in Latin, who, under the title of gentleman of the chamber, wrote many a long letter for Charles, while standing by his bedside, and read many a weary hour to him after the monarch had gone to rest—not, as it would seem, to sleep.[355] This personage tells us that Charles, when sailing on the Rhine, wrote an account of his expeditions to as late a date as 1550.[356] This is not very definite. Any account written under such circumstances, and in so short a time, could be nothing but a sketch of the most general kind. Yet Van Male assures us that he had read the manuscript, which he commends for its terse and elegant diction; and he proposes to make a Latin version of it, the style of which should combine the separate merits of Tacitus, Livy, Suetonius, and Cæsar![357] The admiring chamberlain laments that, instead of giving it to the world, Charles should keep it jealously secured under lock and key.[358]
The emperor's taste for authorship showed itself also in another form. This was by the translation of the "Chevalier Délibéré," a French poem then popular, celebrating the court of his ancestor, Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Van Male, who seems to have done for Charles the Fifth what Voltaire did for Frederick, when he spoke of himself as washing the king's dirty linen, was employed also to overlook this translation, which he pronounces to have possessed great merit in regard to idiom and selection of language. The emperor then gave it to Acuña, a good poet of the court, to be done into Castilian verse. Thus metamorphosed, he proposed to give the copy to Van Male. A mischievous wag, Avila the historian, assured the emperor that it could not be worth less than five hundred gold crowns to that functionary. "And William is well entitled to them," said the monarch, "for he has sweat much over the work."[359] Two thousand copies were forthwith ordered to be printed of the poem, which was to come out anonymously. Poor Van Male, who took a very different view of the profits, and thought that nothing was certain but the cost of the edition, would have excused himself from this proof of his master's liberality. It was all in vain; Charles was not to be balked in his generous purpose; and, without a line to propitiate the public favor, by stating in the preface the share of the royal hand in the composition, it was ushered into the world.[360]
Whatever Charles may have done in the way of an autobiography, he was certainly not indifferent to posthumous fame. He knew that the greatest name must soon pass into oblivion, unless embalmed in the song of the bard or the page of the chronicler. He looked for a chronicler to do for him with his pen what Titian had done for him with his pencil—exhibit him in his true proportions, and in a permanent form, to the eye of posterity! In this he does not seem to have been so much under the influence of vanity as of a natural desire to have his character and conduct placed in a fair point of view—what seemed to him to be such—for the contemplation or criticism of mankind.
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