ess; when, too, it shall discover other dreadful
things of which you have been guilty, some of which are of such a
nature, that, did they concern any other than your highness, _the Holy
Office would be led to inquire whether the author of them were in truth
a Christian_?[1496] It is in the bitterness and anguish of my heart that
I must declare to your highness, that you are not only in danger of
forfeiting your worldly estate, but, what is worse, your own soul." And
he concludes by imploring Carlos, as the only remedy, to return to his
obedience to God, and to the king, who is his representative on earth.

But the admonitions of the honest almoner had as little effect on the
unhappy youth as the prayers of his attendants. The mental excitement
under which he labored, combined with the want of air and exercise,
produced its natural effect on his health. Every day he became more and
more emaciated; while the fever which had so long preyed on his
constitution now burned in his veins with greater fury than ever. To
allay the intolerable heat, he resorted to such desperate expedients as
seemed to intimate, says the papal nuncio, that, if debarred from laying
violent hands on himself, he would accomplish the same end in a slower
way, but not less sure. He deluged the floor with water, not a little to
the inconvenience of the companions of his prison, and walked about for
hours, half naked, with bare feet, on the cold pavement.[1497] He caused
a warming-pan filled with ice and snow to be introduced several times in
a night into his bed, and let it remain there for hours together.[1498]
As if this were not enough, he would gulp down such draughts of
snow-water as distance any achievement on record in the annals of
hydropathy. He pursued the same mad course in respect to what he ate. He
would abstain from food an incredible number of days,[1499] and then,
indulging in proportion to his former abstinence, would devour a pastry
of four partridges, with all the paste, at a sitting, washing it down
with three gallons or more of iced water![1500]

No constitution could long withstand such violent assaults as these. The
constitution of Carlos gradually sank under them. His stomach,
debilitated by long inaction, refused to perform the extraordinary tasks
that were imposed on it. He was attacked by incessant vomiting;
dysentery set in; and his strength rapidly failed. The physician,
Olivares, who alone saw the patient, consulted with hi