quibble, for the sole
benefit of the tavern-keepers of Trent. The finances both of Spain and
the other Austrian states were in the utmost disorder, and the lord of
Mexico and Peru had been forced to borrow from the duke of Florence. It
is no wonder, therefore, that he seized the first gleam of sunshine and
returning calm to make for the long-desired harbor of refuge; and that
he relieved his brow of its thorny crowns as soon as he had attained an
object dear to him as a father, a politician, and a devotee, by placing
his son Philip on the rival throne of the heretic Tudors.

His habits and turn of mind, as well as his Spanish blood, and the
spirit of his age, made a convent the natural place of his retreat.
Monachism seems to have had for him the charm, vague, yet powerful,
which soldiership has for most boys; and he was ever fond of catching
glimpses of the life which he had resolved, sooner or later, to embrace.
When the empress died, he retired to indulge his grief in the cloisters
of La Sisla, at Toledo. After his return from one of his African
campaigns, he paid a visit to the noble convent of Mejorada, near
Olmedo, and spent two days in familiar converse with the Benedictines,
sharing their refectory fare, and walking for hours in their garden
alleys of venerable cypress. When he held his court at Brussels, he was
frequently a guest at the convent of Groenendael; and the monks
commemorated his condescensions, as well as his skill as a marksman, by
placing a bronze statue of him on the banks of their fish-pond, into
which he had brought down a heron, from an amazing altitude, with his
gun. Though unable at Yuste to indulge the love of sport, which may
have had its influence in drawing him to the chestnut woods of the Vera,
we have seen that he continued to the last to take his pleasure in the
converse and companionship of the Jeromites.

In the cloister, Charles was no less popular than he had been in the
world; for in spite of his feeble health and phlegmatic temperament, in
spite of his caution, which amounted to distrust, and his selfishness,
which frequently took the form of treachery, in spite of his love of
power, and the unsparing severity with which he punished the assertion
of popular rights, there was still that in his conduct and bearing which
gained the favor of the multitude. A little book, of no literary value,
but frequently printed both in French and Flemish, sufficiently
indicates in its title th