him
all the favor compatible with equity." On the emperor's expressing some
not unnatural surprise, this Cato of the company offered the very poor
explanation of his request, that, perhaps, the admiral needed the
disputed lands more than the duke, and that it was good to assist the
necessitous.

Borja paid a fourth and last visit in the following year, 1558, to the
monastery. He was sent for by the emperor for the benefit of his
spiritual counsels, possibly after he had been attacked by his closing
illness. For within a few days after the minister's return to
Valladolid, tidings reached the court that the invalid was no more.
During his brief sojourn at Yuste, his holy conversation and example
awakened the religious zeal of Magdalena de Ulloa, the wife of the
mayordomo, Quixada. The good seed thus chance-sown by the wayside sprang
up in after years, bearing abundant fruit for the company in the three
colleges founded and endowed by that devout lady at Villagarcia,
Santander, and Oviedo. Almost a century after his visits, the fame of
the third general of the Jesuits lingered in the country around Yuste.
In 1650, the centenarian of Guijo, a neighboring village, used to tell
how he had seen the emperor and the Count of Oropesa on the road to
Xarandilla, and to point out a great tree, under which they had partaken
of a repast, and he, a child, had been permitted to pick up the crumbs.
But of the individual impressions left on his memory by that remarkable
group, none had endured for the third generation, except "the meek and
penitent face of him they called the saintly duke,"--"_el duque santo_."

In such occupations and in such companionship noiselessly glided away
the cloister life of Charles V. The benefit which his health had reaped
from the fine air of Yuste, was but transient. It began to decline
rapidly in the spring of 1558, after the death of queen Eleanor, to whom
he was tenderly attached. He caused funeral rites to be performed in her
honor, in the church of the monastery, with all the pomp of light and
music that the brotherhood could command. Indeed, funeral services were,
in some sort, the festivals of his lugubrious life; for whenever he
received intelligence of the death of a prince of the blood, or a knight
of the Golden Fleece, he caused his obsequies to be celebrated by the
Jeromites. He was also very mindful of the souls of his deceased
friends, and the masses which were offered day by day up for himsel