A sojourn of about ten days at Valladolid sufficed the emperor for rest, and for the preparations for his journey. His daughter was occupied with the duties of administration; and of his sisters he appears to have seen enough on the way from Flanders. Whether it was that he was weary of these royal matrons, or that he regarded their society as a worldly enjoyment which he ought to forego, he declined their proposal to come and reside near his retreat, at Plasencia. After much debate, they finally chose Guadalaxara as their residence, where they quarelled with the duke of Infantado for refusing them his palace, and went to open war with the alcalde for imprisoning one of their serving-men.
Early in November,[7] their brother set out on his last earthly journey. The distance from Valladolid to Yuste was between forty and fifty leagues, or somewhere between 130 and 150 English miles. The route taken has not been specified by the emperor's biographers. The best and the easiest road lay through Salamanca and Plasencia. But as he does not appear to have passed through the latter city, he probably likewise avoided the former, and the pageants and orations with which the doctors of the great university would have delighted to celebrate his visit. In that case, he must have taken the road by Medina del Campo and Peñaranda. At Medina he doubtless was lodged in the fine old palace of the crown, called the Torre de Mota, where, fifty years before, his grandmother, Isabella the Catholic, ended her noble life and glorious reign; and at Peñaranda he was probably entertained in the mansion of the Bracamontes. These two towns rise like islands in their naked undulating plains, covered partly with corn, partly with marshy heath. Southward, the country is clothed with straggling woods of evergreen oak, becoming denser at the base and on the lower slopes of the wild Sierra of Bejar, the centre of that mountain chain which forms the backbone of the Peninsula, extending from Moncayo in Aragon, to the Rock of Lisbon on the Atlantic. At the alpine town of Bejar, cresting a bold height, and overhanging a tumbling stream, the great family of the Zuñigas, created dukes of the place by Isabella, and known to fame in arts and arms and the dedication of Don Quixote, possess a noble castle, ruined by the French, which there can be little doubt served as a halting-place for the imperial pilgrim. He advanced by very short stages, travelling in a litter, and often suffering great pain. But his spirits rose as he neared the desired haven. In the craggy gorge of Puertonuevo, as he was being carried over some unusually difficult ground in a chair, his attendants were deploring the extreme ruggedness of the pass. "I shall never have to go through another," said he, "and truly it is worth enduring some pain to reach so sweet and healthy a resting place as Yuste." Having crossed the mountains without mischance, he arrived on the eleventh of November, St. Martin's day, at Xarandilla, a little village at the foot of the steep Peñanegra, and then, as now, chiefly peopled with swineherds, whose pigs, feeding in the surrounding forests, maintain the fame of porciferous Estremadura. Here he took up his abode in the castle of the count of Oropesa, head of a powerful branch of the great house of Toledo, and feudal lord of Xarandilla.
This visit, which was intended to be brief, was prolonged for nearly three months. Before entering the cloister of Yuste, the emperor wished to pay off the greater part of his retinue. But for this purpose money was needful, and money was the one thing always wanting in the affairs of Spain. The delay which took place in providing it on this occasion has often been cited as an instance of the ingratitude of Philip II.; but it is probable that a bare exchequer and a clumsy system of finance, which crippled his actions as a king, have also blackened his character as a son.
The emperor endured the annoyance with his usual coolness. On his arrival at the castle, he was waited on by the prior of Yuste, with whom he had already become acquainted at Valladolid. He afterwards repaid the attention by making a forenoon excursion to Yuste, and inspecting more carefully the spot which his memory and his hope had so long pictured as the sweetest nook in a world of disappointment. This visit took place on the 23d of November, St. Catharine's day. On alighting at the convent, Charles immediately repaired to the church, and prayed there awhile; after which, he was conducted over the monastic buildings, and then over the new apartments which had been erected for his reception. The plan of this addition had been made by the architect, Gaspar de Vega, from a sketch, it is said, drawn by the emperor's own hand. He now expressed himself as quite satisfied with the accuracy with which his ideas had been wrought out, and returned through the wintry woods in high good humor.
The arrival at Xarandilla of Luis Quixada, with Don Juan of Austria, was another of those little incidents which had become great events in the life of Charles. As he did not choose during his life to acknowledge the youth as his son, the future hero of Lepanto passed for the page of Quixada, and was presented to his father as bearer of an offering from Doña Magdalena de Ulloa. He was then in his twelfth year, and was remarkable for his personal beauty and his engaging manners. These so captivated Charles, that he ever afterwards liked to have the boy about him; and it was one of the few solaces of his solitude to note the princely promise of this unknown son of his old age.
At length, the tardy treasury messenger arrived, bearing a bag of thirty thousand ducats for the former possessor of Mexico and Peru. The emperor was now enabled to pay their wages to the servants whom he was about to discharge. Some of these he recommended to the notice of the king or the princess-regent; to others he dispensed sparing gratuities in money; and so he closed his accounts with the world.
On the afternoon of the third of February, 1557, being the feast of St. Blas, he was lifted into his litter for the last time, and was borne westward along the rough mountain track, beneath the leafless oaks, to the monastery of Yuste. He was accompanied by the count of Oropesa, Don Fernando de Toledo, and his own personal suite, including the followers whom he had just discharged, but who evinced their respect by attending him to his journey's close. The cavalcade reached Yuste about five in the evening. Prior Angulo was waiting to receive his imperial guest at the gate. On alighting, the emperor, being unable to walk, was placed in a chair, and carried to the door of the church. At the threshold he was met by the whole brotherhood in procession, chanting the Te Deum to the music of the organ. The altars and the aisle were brilliantly lighted up with tapers, and decked with their richest frontals, hangings, and plate. Borne through the pomp to the steps of the high altar, Charles knelt down and returned thanks to God for the happy termination of his journey, and joined in the vesper service of the brotherhood. When that was ended, the friars came to be presented to him one by one, each kissing his hand and receiving his fraternal embrace. During this ceremony, his departing servants stood round, expressing their emotion by tears and lamentations, which were still heard late in the evening, around the gate of the convent. Attended by the count of Oropesa and the gentlemen of his suite, Charles then retired to take possession of his new home, and to enter upon that life of prayer and repose for which he had so long sighed.
The monastery of Yuste stands on the lower slopes of the lofty mountain chain which walls towards the north the beautiful Vera, or valley of Plasencia. The city of Plasencia is seated seven leagues to the westward in the plains below; the village of Quacos lies about an English mile to the south, towards the foot of the mountain. The monastery owes its name to a streamlet which descends from the sierra, and its origin to the piety of one Sancho Martin of Quacos, who granted in 1402 a piece of land to two hermits from Plasencia. Here these holy men built their cells and planted an orchard, and obtained, in 1408, by the favor of the Infanta Don Fernando, a bull for the foundation of a Jeromite house in the rule of St. Augustine. In spite, however, of this authority, while the works were still in progress, the friars of a neighboring convent, armed with an order from the bishop of Plasencia, set upon them and dispossessed them of their land and unfinished walls, an act of violence against which they appealed to the archbishop of Santiago. The judgment of the primate being given in their favor, they next applied for aid to their neighbor, Garci Alvarez de Toledo, lord of Oropesa, who accordingly came forth from his castle of Xarandilla, and drove out the intruders. Nor was it only with the strong hand that this noble protected the young community; for at the chapter of St. Jerome held at Guadalupe in 1415, their house would not have been received into the order but for his generosity in guaranteeing a revenue sufficient for the maintenance of a prior and twelve brethren under a rule in which mendicancy was forbidden. The buildings were also erected at his cost, and his subsequent benefactions were large and frequent. He was therefore constituted by the grateful monks protector of the convent, and the distinction became hereditary in his descendants, the counts of Oropesa.
Their early struggles past, the Jeromites of Yuste grew and prospered. Gifts and bequests were the chief events in their peaceful annals. They became patrons of the chapelries and hermitages; they made them orchards and olive-groves, and their corn and wine increased. Their hostel, dispensary, and other offices, were patterns of monastic comfort and order; and in due time, they built a new church, a simple, solid, and spacious structure, in the pointed style. A few years before the emperor came to live amongst them, they had added to their small antique cloister a new quadrangle of stately proportions and elegant classical design.
Though more remarkable for the natural beauty around its walls than for the vigor of the spiritual life within, Yuste did not fail to boast of its worthies. The prior Jerome, a son of the great house of Zuniga, was cited as a model of austere and active holiness. The lay brother, Melchor de Yepes, crippled in felling a huge chesnut-tree in the forest, was a pattern of bed-ridden patience and piety. Fray Hernando de Corral was the scholar and book collector of the house; although he was also, for that reason, perhaps, considered as scarcely of a sound mind. He left many copious notes in the fly-leaves of his black-letter folios. Fray Juan de Xeres, an old soldier of the great Captain, was distinguished by the gift of second-sight, and was nursed on his death-bed by the eleven thousand virgins. Still more favored was Fray Rodrigo de Caceres, for the Blessed Mary herself, in answer to his repeated prayers, came down in visible shape, and received his spirit on the eve of the feast of her Assumption. And prior Diego de San Geronimo was so popular in the Vera as a preacher, that when he grew old and infirm, the people of Garganta la Olla endeavored to lure him to their pulpit by making a road, which was called that of Fray Diego.