All That Was Human Had Died Out Of
Him Years Before His Actual Demise, And Death Seemed Not To Consider It
Worth While To Carry Off A Vampire.
Go into the little apartment where
his last days were passed; a wooden table and book-shelf, one arm-
Chair
and two stools - the one upholstered with cloth for winter, the other
with tin for summer - on which he rested his gouty leg, and a low chair
for a secretary, - this was all the furniture he used. The rooms are not
larger than cupboards, low and dark. The little oratory where he died
looks out upon the high altar of the Temple. In a living death, as if by
an awful anticipation of the common lot it was ordained that in the
flesh he should know corruption, he lay waiting his summons hourly for
fifty-three days. What tremendous doubts and fears must have assailed
him in that endless agony! He had done more for the Church than any
living man. He was the author of that sublime utterance of uncalculating
bigotry, "Better not reign than reign over heretics." He had pursued
error with fire and sword. He had peopled limbo with myriads of rash
thinkers. He had impoverished his kingdom in Catholic wars. Yet all this
had not sufficed. He lay there like a leper smitten by the hand of the
God he had so zealously served. Even in his mind there was no peace. He
held in his clenched hand his father's crucifix, which Charles had held
in his exultant death at Yuste. Yet in his waking hours he was never
free from the horrible suggestion that he had not done enough for
salvation. He would start in horror from a sleep that was peopled with
shapes from torment. Humanity was avenged at last.
So powerful is the influence of a great personality that in the Escorial
you can think of no one but Philip II. He lived here only fourteen
years, but every corridor and cloister seems to preserve the souvenir of
his sombre and imperious genius. For two and a half centuries his feeble
successors have trod these granite halls; but they flit through your
mind pale and unsubstantial as dreams. The only tradition they preserved
of their great descent was their magnificence and their bigotry. There
has never been one utterance of liberty or free thought inspired by this
haunted ground. The king has always been absolute here, and the monk has
been the conscience-keeper of the king. The whole life of the Escorial
has been unwholesomely pervaded by a flavor of holy water and burial
vaults. There was enough of the repressive influence of that savage
Spanish piety to spoil the freshness and vigor of a natural life, but
not enough to lead the court and the courtiers to a moral walk and
conversation. It was as profligate a court in reality, with all its
masses and monks, as the gay and atheist circle of the Regent of
Orleans. Even Philip, the Inquisitor King, did not confine his royal
favor to his series of wives. A more reckless and profligate young
prodigal than Don Carlos, the hope of Spain and Rome, it would be hard
to find to-day at Mabille or Cre-morne. But he was a deeply religious
lad for all that, and asked absolution from his confessors before
attempting to put in practice his intention of killing his father.
Philip, forewarned, shut him up until he died, in an edifying frame of
mind, and then calmly superintended the funeral arrangements from a
window of the palace. The same mingling of vice and superstition is seen
in the lessening line down to our day. The last true king of the old
school was Philip IV. Amid the ruins of his tumbling kingdom he lived
royally here among his priests and his painters and his ladies. There
was one jealous exigency of Spanish etiquette that made his favor fatal.
The object of his adoration, when his errant fancy strayed to another,
must go into a convent and nevermore be seen of lesser men. Madame
Daunoy, who lodged at court, heard one night an august footstep in the
hall and a kingly rap on the bolted door of a lady of honor. But we are
happy to say she heard also the spirited reply from within, "May your
grace go with God! I do not wish to be a nun!"
There is little in these frivolous lives that is worth knowing, - the
long inglorious reigns of the dwindling Austrians and the parody of
greater days played by the scions of Bourbon, relieved for a few
creditable years by the heroic struggle of Charles III. against the
hopeless decadence. You may walk for an hour through the dismal line of
drawing-rooms in the cheerless palace that forms the gridiron's handle,
and not a spirit is evoked from memory among all the tapestry and
panelling and gilding.
The only cheerful room in this granite wilderness is the library, still
in good and careful keeping. A long, beautiful room, two hundred feet of
bookcases, and tasteful frescos by Tibaldi and Carducho, representing
the march of the liberal sciences. Most of the older folios are bound in
vellum, with their gilded edges, on which the title is stamped, turned
to the front. A precious collection of old books and older manuscripts,
useless to the world as the hoard of a miser. Along the wall are hung
the portraits of the Escorial kings and builders. The hall is furnished
with marble and porphyry tables, and elaborate glass cases display some
of the curiosities of the library, - a copy of the Gospels that belonged
to the Emperor Conrad, the Suabian Kurz; a richly illuminated
Apocalypse; a gorgeous missal of Charles V.; a Greek Bible, which once
belonged to Mrs. Phcebus's ancestor Cantacuzene; Persian and Chinese
sacred books; and a Koran, which is said to be the one captured by Don
Juan at Lepanto.
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