from under his head.

How strong he was! how superbly the chest of this child not yet four
years old already arched! This bud, when it had bloomed to manhood,
might prove itself, as he himself had done in his youth, the stronger
among the strong. He carefully examined the harmoniously developed
little muscles. What a knight this child promised to become! Surely
it was hardly created for quiet prayer and the inactive peace of the
cloister! He was still free to dispose of the boy. If he should intrust
his physical development to the reliable Quijada, skilled in every
knightly art, and to Count Lanoi, famed as a rider and judge of horses;
confide the training of his mind and soul to the Bishop of Arras, the
learned Frieslander Viglius, or any other clever, strictly religious
man, he might become a second Roland and Bayard--nay, if a crown fell to
his lot, he might rival his great-grandfather, the Emperor Max, and--in
many a line he, too, had done things worthy of imitation--him, his
father. The possession of this child would fill his darkened life with
sunshine, his heart, paralyzed by grief and disappointment, with fresh
pleasure in existence throughout the brief remainder of his earthly
pilgrimage. If he, the father, acknowledged him and aided him to become
a happy, perhaps a great man, this lovely creature might some day be a
brilliant star in the firmament of his age.

Here he paused. The question, "For how long?" forced itself upon him.
He, too, during the short span of youth had been a hero and a victorious
knight. With secure confidence he had undertaken to establish for
himself and his family a sovereignty of the world which should include
the state and the Church. "More, farther," had been his motto, and to
what stupendous successes it had led him! Three years before he had
routed at Muhlberg his most powerful rivals. As prisoners they still
felt his avenging hand.

And now? At this hour?

The hope of the sovereignty of the world lay shattered at his feet. The
wish to obtain the German imperial crown for his heir and successor,
Philip, had proved unattainable. It was destined for his brother,
Ferdinand of Austria, and afterward for the latter's son, Maximilian.
To lead the defeated German Protestants back to the bosom of the Holy
Church appeared more and more untenable. Here in the Netherlands the
heretics, in consequence of the Draconian severity of the regulations
which he himself had issued, had been hung