mysteries of the grave
from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary
in his house. Juana, from whom the mental constitution of her posterity
seems to have derived a morbid taint, had sate, year after year, by the
bed on which lay the ghastly remains of her husband, apparelled in the
rich embroidery and jewels which he had been wont to wear while living.
Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in celebrating his own
obsequies, in putting on his shroud, placing himself in the coffin,
covering himself with the pall; and lying as one dead till the requiem
had been sung, and the mourners had departed leaving him alone in the
tomb. Philip the Second found a similar pleasure in gazing on the huge
chest of bronze in which his remains were to be laid, and especially on
the skull which, encircled with the crown of Spain, grinned at him from
the cover. Philip the Fourth, too, hankered after burials and burial
places, gratified his curiosity by gazing on the remains of his great
grandfather, the Emperor, and sometimes stretched himself out at full
length like a corpse in the niche which he had selected for himself
in the royal cemetery. To that cemetery his son was now attracted by
a strange fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of
sepulture. A staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately
church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high
altar. The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious
marbles, which reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver.
On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus,
the departed kings and queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King
descended with a long train of courtiers, and ordered the coffins to be
unclosed. His mother had been embalmed with such consummate skill that
she appeared as she had appeared on her death bed. The body of his
grandfather too seemed entire, but crumbled into dust at the first
touch. From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his
grandfather could draw any sign of sensibility. But, when the gentle and
graceful Louisa of Orleans, the miserable man's first wife, she who
had lighted up his dark existence with one short and pale gleam of
happiness, presented herself, after the lapse of ten years, to his eyes,
his sullen apathy gave way. "She is in heaven," he cried; "and I shall
soon be there with her;" and, with all the speed of which