elled to sign the treaty of Passau,
which secured to the Protestants those religious immunities against
which he had contended through his whole reign.

Not long after, he experienced another humiliating reverse from France,
then ruled by a younger rival, Henry the Second, the son of Francis. The
good star of Charles--the star of Austria--seemed to have set; and as he
reluctantly raised the siege of Metz, he was heard bitterly to exclaim,
"Fortune is a strumpet, who reserves her favors for the young!"

With spirits greatly depressed by his reverses, and still more by the
state of his health, which precluded him from taking part in the manly
and martial exercises to which he had been accustomed, he felt that he
had no longer the same strength as formerly to bear up under the toils
of empire. When but little more than thirty years of age, he had been
attacked by the gout, and of late had been so sorely afflicted with that
disorder, that he had nearly lost the use of his limbs. The man who,
cased in steel, had passed whole days and nights in the saddle,
indifferent to the weather and the season, could now hardly drag himself
along with the aid of his staff. For days he was confined to his bed;
and he did not leave his room for weeks together. His mind became
oppressed with melancholy, which was, to some extent, a constitutional
infirmity. His chief pleasure was in listening to books, especially of a
religious character. He denied himself to all except his most intimate
and trusted counsellors. He lost his interest in affairs; and for whole
months, according to one of his biographers, who had access to his
person, he refused to receive any public communication, or to subscribe
any document, or even letter.[2] One cannot understand how the business
of the nation could have been conducted in such a state of things.
After the death of his mother, Joanna, his mind became more deeply
tinctured with those gloomy fancies which in her amounted to downright
insanity. He imagined he heard her voice calling on him to follow her.
His thoughts were now turned from secular concerns to those of his own
soul; and he resolved to put in execution a plan for resigning his crown
and withdrawing to some religious retreat, where he might prepare for
his latter end. This plan he had conceived many years before, in the
full tide of successful ambition. So opposite were the elements at work
in the character of this extraordinary man!

Although he