The illness gained ground rapidly; each day, even each hour, produced some new, strange and painful symptom. At times he was seized with fainting fits, in which he appeared to have drawn his last breath, at others with delirium of wild things and of war, in which he always imagined himself commanding in a battle, and from which he was only drawn by the names of Jesus and Mary, which Fathers Orantes and Fernández invoked in his hearing. On the 30th D. John felt so weak that he again desired to receive the Viaticum, and charged Fr. Francisco de Orantes to give him extreme unction in time, whenever he judged that the moment had come. At nightfall that day the confessor thought that the time had arrived, and administered the last Sacrament to him, which D. John received with great devotion and perfect consciousness, in the presence of all the Field-Marshals and other personages who were crowded into the narrow precincts.
No one slept that night in fort or camp, and continually messengers went to and fro, bearers of sad news. At dawn Father Juan Fernández said mass at the bedside, thinking D. John unconscious, as his eyes were already closed; but being told by the confessor that the Host was being raised, he quickly took off his cap and did reverence. At nine o'clock he seemed somewhat to revive, and then he was taken with a fresh delirium, in which, with extraordinary strength, he began to get angry with the soldiers, commanding in a battle, giving orders to the battalions, calling the captains by name, sending horses flying, reproving them at times because they allowed themselves to be cut off by the enemy, calling others to victory with eyes, hands and voice, always clamouring for the Marqués de Santa Cruz, whom he called "D. Álvaro, my friend," his guide, master, and his right hand.
"Jesus! Jesus! Mary!" implored the confessor. "Jesus! Jesus! Mary!" at last repeated D. John of Austria, and, repeating these holy names, became gradually calmer, until he sank into a profound lethargy, forerunner, doubtless, of death, with his eyes shut, his body inert, with the Crucifix of the Moors on his breast, where P. Juan Fernández had placed it, the only sign of life being his difficult, uneven breathing.
They all knelt, believing that the supreme moment had come, and the two priests began to recite by turns the prayers for the dying. Suddenly, about eleven o'clock, D. John gave a great sigh, and they heard him distinctly articulate in a weak but clear, sweet, plaintive voice, like a child calling to its mother, "Aunt! Aunt! My lady Aunt!"
And this was all. For two hours the lethargy lasted, and at half-past one, without effort, trouble, or any violence, he gasped twice, and the soul of "That John sent by God" fled to His bosom to render account of the mission which had been confided to him.
Had he really fulfilled it? Was the mission of D. John of Austria to drown in the waters of Lepanto the great power of the Turk, threat to the faith of Christ and to the liberty of Europe, or did the mission also extend to conquering the kingdom of England, and bringing back that great people to the fold of the Catholic Church, as Christ's two Vicars Pius V and Gregory XIII wished and thought?
If it were so, D. John of Austria can well liquidate his debt before the Divine Tribunal, giving for only answer those words of Christ to St. Theresa, which so alarmingly show the fearful reach of human free will: "Theresa! I wished it, but men did not wish it."
Eusebio Nieremberg, in his life of the P. Juan Fernández, relates this strange circumstance relative to D. John of Austria: