e in the saddle. But the limbs that had bestrode day
after day, without fatigue, the heavy war-horse of Flanders and the
wildest genet of Andalusia, were unable now to endure the motion of a
poor palfrey; and, after a solitary experiment in the saddle on his
arrival at Yuste, when he nearly fainted, he abandoned it for ever.[286]

There are few spots that might now be visited with more interest, than
that which the great emperor had selected as his retreat from the thorny
cares of government. And until within a few years the traveller would
have received from the inmates of the convent the same hospitable
welcome which they had always been ready to give to the stranger. But in
1809 the place was sacked by the French; and the fierce soldiery of
Soult converted the pile, with its venerable cloisters, into a heap of
blackened ruins. Even the collection of manuscripts, piled up with so
much industry by the brethren, did not escape the general doom. The
_palace_ of the emperor, as the simple monks loved to call his dwelling,
had hardly a better fate, though it came from the hands of Charles's own
countrymen, the liberals of Cuacos. By these patriots the lower floor of
the mansion was turned into stables for their horses. The rooms above
were used as magazines for grain. The mulberry-leaves were gathered from
the garden to furnish material for the silkworm, who was permitted to
wind his cocoon in the deserted chambers of royalty. Still the great
features of nature remain the same as in Charles's day. The bald peaks
of the sierra still rise above the ruins of the monastery. The shaggy
sides of the hills still wear their wild forest drapery. Far below, the
eye of the traveller ranges over the beautiful _Vera_ of Plasencia,
which glows in the same exuberant vegetation as of yore; and the
traveller, as he wanders among the ruined porticos and desolate arcades
of the palace, drinks in the odors of a thousand aromatic plants and
wild-flowers that have shot up into a tangled wilderness, where once was
the garden of the imperial recluse.[287]

Charles, though borne across the mountains in a litter, had suffered
greatly in his long and laborious journey from Valladolid. He passed
some time in the neighboring village of Xarandilla, and thence, after
taking leave of the greater part of his weeping retinue, he proceeded
with the remainder to the monastery of Yuste. It was on the third of
February, 1557, that he entered the abode which wa