ear was quick to distinguish any strange voice, as
well as any false note in the performance,--on which last occasion he
would sometimes pause in his devotions, and, in half-suppressed tones,
give vent to his anger by one of those scurrilous epithets, which,
however they may have fallen in with the habits of the old campaigner,
were but indifferently suited to his present way of life.[299]

Such time as was not given to his religious exercises was divided among
various occupations, for which he had always had a relish, though
hitherto but little leisure to pursue them. Besides his employments in
his garden, he had a decided turn for mechanical pursuits. Some years
before, while in Germany, he had invented an ingenious kind of carriage
for his own accommodation.[300] He brought with him to Yuste an engineer
named Torriano, famous for the great hydraulic works he constructed in
Toledo. With the assistance of this man, a most skilful mechanician,
Charles amused himself by making a variety of puppets representing
soldiers, who went through military exercises. The historian draws
largely on our faith, by telling us also of little wooden birds which
the ingenious pair contrived, so as to fly in and out of the window
before the admiring monks![301] But nothing excited their astonishment
so much as a little hand-mill, used for grinding wheat, which turned out
meal enough in a single day to support a man for a week or more. The
good fathers thought this savored of downright necromancy; and it may
have furnished an argument against the unfortunate engineer in the
persecution which he afterwards underwent from the Inquisition.

Charles took, moreover, great interest in the mechanism of timepieces.
He had a good number of clocks and watches ticking together in his
apartments; and a story has obtained credit, that the difficulty he
found in making any two of them keep the same time drew from him an
exclamation on the folly of attempting to bring a number of men to think
alike in matters of religion, when he could not regulate any two of his
timepieces so as to make them agree with each other; a philosophical
reflection for which one will hardly give credit to the man who, with
his dying words, could press on his son the maintenance of the
Inquisition as the great bulwark of the Catholic faith. In the gardens
of Yuste there is still, or was lately, to be seen, a sun-dial
constructed by Torriano to enable his master to measure more ac