THE EMPEROR MONK’S CHOIR.
At the convent of Yuste the Emperor Charles had with him a little organ with a silver case and of exquisite tone, which had long been kept at the Escurial, and which was also the companion of his journeys and the solace of his evenings when encamped before Tunis. The choir at Yuste, in order to gratify the Emperor’s love of music, had been reinforced with fifteen friars, chosen from different monasteries for their fine voices and skill in the art. The Emperor took a lively interest in the management of the choir and organ, and from the window of his bedroom his voice might often be heard accompanying the chant of the friars. His ear never failed to detect a false note and the mouth from which it came. A singing-master from Plasencia, being one day in the church, ventured to join in the service, but he had not sung many bars when orders came down from the palace to keep silence. Guerrero, a “chapel-master” of Seville, having composed and presented to the Emperor a book of masses and motets, one of the former was selected for performance at Yuste. When it was ended, the imperial critic remarked to his confessor which were the stolen passages skilfully appropriated from the best masters and their works and names.
NOT A MONK AT DINNER-TIME.
The Emperor Charles V., though all his life looking forward to being a monk, did not understand a monkish dinner. After a year’s sojourn in Yuste, his physician considered His Majesty well enough to leave off his sarsaparilla and liquorice water. Then, as usual, Charles ate voraciously. His dinner began with a large dish of cherries or strawberries, smothered in cream and sugar; then came a highly-seasoned pasty; and next the principal dish of the repast, which was frequently a ham, or some preparation of rashers—the Emperor being very fond of the bacon products of Estremadura. “His Majesty,” said the doctor, “will not hear of changing his diet or mode of living, trusting too much to the force of habit, and forgetting the consequences to bodies like his, full of bad humours.” His hands occasionally troubled him, and his fingers were sometimes ulcerated. But his chief complaint was of the heat and itching in his legs at night, which he endeavoured to relieve by sleeping with them uncovered—a measure whereby temporary ease was purchased at the expense of a chill which crept into the upper part of his body, in spite of blankets and eiderdown quilts. Then came threatenings of gout, attempts to cure by cold bathing, perpetual itching, and other symptoms, which gradually enfeebled him. It was said that His Majesty’s cook was driven out of his wits to invent new dishes for table, and that he believed there was nothing left but to serve up a fricassée of watches.
THE EMPEROR MONK CELEBRATES HIS OWN FUNERAL.
The Emperor used, when any of his friends died, to do honour to their memory by causing their obsequies to be performed by the friars, and each on a different day. At last he asked his confessor whether he might not now perform his own funeral, and so do for himself what would soon have to be done for him by others. “Would it not be good for my soul?” asked the Emperor. And the monk replied that certainly it would, for pious works done during life were far more efficacious than when they were postponed till after death. Preparations were therefore at once set on foot. A catafalque was erected, and next day the celebrated service was actually performed. The high altar, the catafalque, and the whole church shone with a blaze of wax lights; the friars were all in their places at the altars and in the choir, and the household of the Emperor attended in deep mourning. The pious monarch himself (says his biographer) was there, attired in sable weeds and bearing a taper to see himself interred and to celebrate his own obsequies. While they were singing the solemn mass for the dead, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of the officiating priest, in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his Maker. High above, over the kneeling throng, the gorgeous vestments, the flowers, the curling incense, and the glittering altar, the same idea shone forth on that splendid canvas whereon Titian had pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold of the heavenly mansions prepared for the blessed. The funeral rites ended, the Emperor dined, but he ate little; and feeling a violent pain in his head, he lay down, and next day he told his confessor that the funeral of the day before had done him good. He died six weeks later.
FUNERAL SERMON ON THE EMPEROR MONK.
When the Emperor Charles V. died, a monk at Yuste, his chamberlain said of him that he was the greatest man that ever lived, or ever would live, in the world. In his last moments he said, “The time is come; bring me the candle and the crucifix.” These cherished relics he had long kept for this supreme hour, and he died with his eyes fixed on the crucifix. His body was embalmed and laid in a coffin in front of the high altar. The eloquent preacher Villalva preached a funeral sermon so impassioned, that the hearers declared that it made their flesh creep and their hair stand on end. Sixteen years later messengers went to remove the body to the mausoleum at the Escurial. The monks bewailed the loss of so precious a deposit, and one of them took occasion to preach an affecting sermon, in which he thus apostrophised the dead monarch: “Although you are but a lifeless corpse, the garment of the spirit which has long enjoyed, as we believe, the glory of God, we thank your Cæsarean majesty for the grace which you have bestowed on Yuste and on our order. In a year and eight months passed in this solitude we are well assured that you have gained more renown than in the whole of your long reign. History, indeed, will never forget your great achievements, but in the end of your life you surpassed them all. Grief for losing you, who so loved us, chokes my utterance; for I know that when you are gone, although we who are now alive are your devoted servants and chaplains, a time will come when even in this place your memory will be regarded no more than if you had never dwelt within our walls.” This last allusion was prophetic; for in 1849, when Mr. Stirling visited Yuste, he found it in ruins, and all save the great walnut tree told only of mouldering decay. O’Campo, the chronicler of the Emperor Charles V., had undertaken to write his history; but having begun at Noah’s flood was, after forty years’ labour, surprised by death while narrating the exploits of the Scipios, B.C. 183.