he clergy were excessively corrupt. He doubled his fasts,
wore a hair shirt, slept on the bare ground, scourged himself with
assiduity and ardor; became the confessor of Queen Isabella, and
therefore of great political importance, inasmuch as she followed his
counsel, not alone in things spiritual, but also in things temporal.
Severe in his sanctity, he demanded the same of his brethren, and
reformed the Franciscans, over whom he had been put despite frantic
opposition. In the face of his own disinclination and determined
refusal to accept the office, he was impelled, by means of a second
papal bull, to accept the episcopate of Toledo, the highest
ecclesiastical honor in Spain; but under his episcopal robes still wore
his coarse monk's frock. The nobles of Castile were agreed to intrust
that kingdom's affairs in his hands at the death of Philip, and after
the death of Ferdinand the regency devolved upon him; and in the midst
of a turbulent nobility, he ruled as born to kingship. Charles
continued him in power after he had assumed the kingdom, but made such
lawless demands on the Spanish people as to bring Ximenes into ill
favor among those for whom he administered. At the last he tasted that
ingratitude so characteristic of Charles, and was virtually superseded
in his regency, but had lived long enough to disclose a mind and force
which entitle him to a high rank among the statesmen of the world. At
the beginning of his reign, Charles had begun that series of
ingratitudes and betrayals which ended only with his abdication.
Charles V was a braggadocio, a tyrant, a sensualist, without honor, and
without nobility. The surprise grows on us, perceiving such a man
courted, feted, honored, and arbiter of the destinies of Europe for
thirty-seven years. I do not find one virtue in him. In Julius
Caesar, a voluptuary and red with carnage, there were yet multitudinous
virtues. We do not wonder men loved him and were glad to die for him.
He had a soul, and honor, and remembrance of friendship. He was a
genius, superlative and bewildering. We can forget and forgive some
things in such a man; but for such a sovereign as Charles V, what can
we say, save that he was not so execrable as Philip II, his son?
Charles, being Flemish in birth, both Flanders and himself considered
him less Spaniard than Belgian. He was Emperor first and King of Spain
afterward; and in Flanders he set the pageant of his abdication.

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