King Philip presided over forty consultations of doctors between April 30th and May 8th. He sat on his throne with the Duque de Alba on his right and D. García de Toledo on his left; behind were the Grandees of the Court and in front the doctors, sitting on benches in a semi-circle. D. García de Toledo indicated whose turn it was to speak. At one of these consultations someone spoke of an old Moor in Valencia, called the Pintadillo, who had effected wonderful cures with unguents of his own making. The doctors protested; but the King sent to fetch the Pintadillo post-haste, to the great annoyance and scandal of them all.
The night of the 8th of May the doctors gave the Prince up, and told the King that he could not live more than three or four hours.
D. Philip did not wish to see him die, and left that same night, having given the Duque de Alba and the Conde de Feria detailed instructions for the funeral and burying of his son. Some of the lords of the Court hastened to buy cloth for mourning.
All that sad night D. John of Austria passed by the pillow of the dying boy, and at dawn he told the Duque de Alba to accompany him to the convent of Jesus and Mary, for the last time, to ask Fr. Diego to save the Prince.
Then the Duque de Alba had a sudden idea, inspired, no doubt, by God. He ordered, in the name of the King, that the tomb of Fr. Diego should be opened and the body taken to the Prince's room.
The procession was arranged by midday; in front went the people begging mercy from God; then followed hundreds of penitents in hoods and sackcloth, their shoulders bare, cruelly disciplining themselves; then four brothers of St. Francis, carrying on a bier the body of Fr. Diego, which was in a coffin, covered with a shroud, his face, not decomposed, but dried up as it is to-day, uncovered.
Right and left of the coffin went two penitents, their faces covered by a hood of coarse material, and, below, the sackcloth tunic showing their bare and bleeding feet cut by the stones of the road; they were those two "thunderbolts of war," Alexander Farnese and D. John of Austria.
Behind them came the Duque de Alba, with uncovered head, followed and surrounded by the University communities, students, nobility, clergy, courtiers and professors, not in a devout and orderly procession, but all anyhow, filling up the streets like a wave of sorrow and bitterness, which carried to the palace the body of Fr. Diego, which was to save the only male heir of the Crown of Spain.
The body entered the Prince's room, the doors of which were already wide open, as is proper for those of a death-chamber, and all followed who could, without order, precedence or arrangement.
The Prince was lying in bed on his back, his eyes closed through swelling of the lids, his nose pinched, his mouth open, and his hoarse breathing coming with difficulty from his dry throat.