A short time sufficed for the emperor to accustom himself to the simple and changeless tenor of monastic life. Every morning his confessor appeared at his bed-side, to inquire how he had passed the night, and to assist him in his private devotions. At ten he rose, and was dressed by his valets; after which he heard mass in the convent church. According to his invariable habit, which in Italy was said to have given rise to the saying, dalla messa, alla mensa (from mass to mess), he went from church to dinner, about noon. Eating had ever been one of his favorite pleasures, and it was now the only physical gratification which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. He continued, therefore, to dine upon the rich dishes against which his ancient and trusty confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, had vainly protested a quarter of a century before. Eel-pasties, anchovies, and frogs were the savory food which he loved, unwisely and too well, as Frederick afterwards loved his polenta. The meal was long, for his teeth were few and far between; and his hands, also, were much disabled by gout, in spite of which he always chose to carve for himself. His physician attended him at table, and at least learned the cause of the mischiefs which his art was to counteract. While he dined, he conversed with the doctor on matters of science, generally of natural history, and if any difference of opinion arose between them, the confessor was sent for to settle the point out of Pliny. When the cloth was drawn, Fray Juan de Regla came to read to him, generally from one of his favorite divines,—Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard; an exercise which was followed by conversation and an hour of slumber. At three o'clock, the monks were assembled in the convent to hear a sermon delivered by one of the imperial preachers, or a passage read from the Bible, usually from the epistle to the Romans, the emperor's favorite book. To these discourses or readings Charles always listened with profound attention; and if sickness or letter-writing prevented his attendance, he never failed to send a formal excuse to the prior, and to require from his confessor an account of what had been preached or read. The rest of the afternoon he sometimes whiled away in the workshop of Turriano, and in the construction of pieces of mechanism, especially clocks, of which more than a hundred were said, in one rather improbable account, to tick in the emperor's apartments, and reckon to a fraction the hours of his retired leisure. Sometimes he fed his pet birds, which appear to have taken the place of the stately wolf-hounds that followed at his heel in the days when he sat to Titian; or a stroll amongst his fruit-trees and flowers filled up the time to vespers and supper. At the lower end of the garden, approached by a closely shaded path, there may still be seen the ruins of a little summer-house, closely enbowered, and looking out upon the woodlands of the Vera. Beyond this limit the emperor rarely extended his excursions, which were always made, slowly and painfully, on foot; for the first time that he mounted his pony he was seized with a violent giddiness, and almost fell into the arms of his attendants. Such was the last appearance, in the saddle, of the accomplished cavalier, of whom his troopers used to say, that had he not been born a king, he would have been the prince of light-horsemen, and whose seat and hand excited at Calais gate the admiration of the English knights fresh from the tournays—
"Where England vied with France in pride
On the famous field of gold."
Music, which had been one of the chief pleasures of his secular life, continued to solace and cheer him to the last. In the conduct of the organ and the choir he took the greatest interest, and through the window which opened from his bedchamber upon the high altar, his voice might often be heard accompanying the chant of the friars. His ear never failed to detect a wrong note, and the mouth whence it came; and he would frequently mutter the name of the offender, with the addition of "hideputa bermejo," or some other epithet which savored rather of the soldier than the saint. Guerrero, a chapel-master of Seville, having presented him with his book of masses and motets, he caused one of the former to be performed before him. When it was ended, he remarked to his confessor that Guerrero was a cunning thief; and going over the piece, he pointed out the plagiarisms with which it abounded, and named the composers whose works had suffered pillage.
In laying down the sceptre, Charles had resolved to have no farther personal concern with temporal affairs. The petitioners, who at first besieged his retreat, soon ceased from troubling when they found themselves referred to the princess-regent at Valladolid, or to the king in Flanders. He declined giving any attention to matters beyond the walls of the convent, unless they concerned the interests of his children or the church. His advice was, however, frequently asked by his son and daughter, and couriers often went and came between Yuste and the courts. But with the patronage of the state he never interfered, except on two occasions, when he recommended the case of a Catalonian lady to the favorable consideration of the Infanta, and asked for an order of knighthood for a veteran brother in arms.
The rites of religion now formed the business of his life, and he transacted that business with his usual method and regularity. No enthusiast novice was ever more solicitous to fulfil to the letter every law of his rubric. On the first Sunday of his residence at the convent, as he went to high mass, he observed the friar who was sprinkling the holy water, hesitate when his turn came to be aspersed. Taking the hyssop, therefore, from his hand, he bestowed a plentiful shower upon his own face and clothes, saying as he returned the instrument, "This, father, is the way you must do it, next time." Another friar, offering the pyx to his lips in a similar diffident manner, he took it between his hands, and not only kissed it fervently, but applied it to his forehead and eyes with true oriental reverence. Although provided with an indulgence for eating before communion, he never availed himself of it but when he was suffering from extreme debility; and he always heard two masses on the days when he received the eucharist. On Ash Wednesday, he required his entire household, down to the meanest scullion, to communicate, and on these occasions he stood on the top step of the altar, to observe that the muster was complete. For the benefit of his Flemings, he had a chaplain of their country, who lived at Xarandilla, and came over at stated times, when his flock were assembled for confession. The emperor himself usually heard mass from the window of his bedchamber, which looked into the church; but at complines he went up into the choir with the fathers, and prayed in a devout and audible tone, in his tribune. During the season of Lent, which came round twice during his residence at Yuste, he regularly appeared in his place in the choir, on Fridays, when it was the custom of the fraternity to perform their discipline in public; and at the end of the appointed prayers, extinguishing the taper which he, like the rest, held in his hand, he flogged himself with such sincerity of purpose, that the scourge was stained with blood, and the beholders singularly edified. On Good Friday, he went forth at the head of his household, to adore the holy cross; and although he was so infirm that he was obliged to be almost carried by the men on whom he leaned, he insisted upon prostrating himself three times upon the ground, in the manner of the friars, before he approached the blessed symbol with his lips. The feast of St. Matthew, his birthday—a day of great things in his life,—he always celebrated with peculiar devotion. He appeared at mass, in a dress of ceremony, and wearing the collar of the Fleece; and at the time of the offertory, he went forward, and expressed his gratitude to God by a large donation. The church was thronged with strangers; and the crowd who could not gain admittance was so great, that one sermon was preached outside, whilst another was being pronounced before the emperor and his household within.
With the friars, his hosts, Charles lived on the most familiar and friendly footing. When the visitors of the order paid their triennial visit of inspection to Yuste, they represented to him, with all respect, that his majesty himself was the only inmate of the convent with whom they had any fault to find; and they entreated him to discontinue those benefactions which he was in the habit of bestowing on the fraternity, and which the rule of St. Jerome did not allow his children to receive. He knew all the fathers by name and by sight, and frequently conversed with them, as well as with the prior. One of his favorites was a lay-brother, called Alonso Mudarra, once a man of rank and family in the world, and now working out his own salvation in the humble post of cook to the convent. This worthy had an only daughter, who did not share her father's contempt for mundane things. When she came with her husband to visit him at Yuste, Fray Alonso, arrayed in his dirtiest apron, thus addressed her: "Daughter, behold my gala apparel; obedience is now my treasure and my pride; for you, in your silks and vanities, I entertain profound pity." So saying, he returned to his kitchen, and would never see her more: an effort of holiness to which he appears to owe his place in the chronicles of the order.
The emperor was conversing one day with his confessor, Regla, when that priest chose to speak, in the mitre-shunning cant of his cloth, of the great reluctance which he had felt in accepting a post of such weighty responsibility. "Never fear," said Charles, somewhat maliciously, and as if conscious that he was dealing with a hypocrite; "before I left Flanders, four doctors were engaged for a whole year in easing my conscience; so you have nothing to answer for but what happens here."
When he had completed a year of residence at the convent, some good-humored bantering passed between him and the master of the novices about its being now time for him to make profession; and he afterwards said that he was prevented from taking the vows of the order, and becoming a monk in earnest, only by the state of his health. St. Blas's day, 1558, the anniversary of his arrival, was held as a festival, and celebrated by masses, the Te Deum, a precession by the fathers, and a sermon by Villalva. In the afternoon, the emperor gave a sumptuous repast to the whole convent, out in the fields, it being the custom of the fraternity to celebrate any accession to their number by a pic-nic. The country people about Plasencia sent a quantity of partridges and kids to aid the feast, which was likewise enlivened by the presence of the Flemish servants, male and female, and his other retainers, from the village of Quacos. The prior provided a more permanent memorial of the day by opening a new book for the names of brethren admitted into the convent, on the first leaf of which the emperor inscribed his name—an autograph which remained the pride of the archives till their destruction by the dragoons of Buonaparte.
The retired emperor had not many visitors in his solitude; and of these few, Juan de Vega, president of the council of Castille, was the only personage in high office. He was sent down by the princess-regent, apparently to see that her father was treated with due attention by the provincial authorities. But with his neighbors, great and small, Charles lived in a state of amity which it would have been well for the world had he been able to maintain with his fellow-potentates of Christendom. The few nobles and gentry of the Vera were graciously received when they came to pay their respects at Yuste. Oropesa and his brothers frequently rode forth from Xarandilla, to inquire after the health of their former guest. From Plasencia came a still more distinguished and no less welcome guest, Luis de Avila, comendador-mayor of Alcantara. Long the fidus Achates of the emperor, this soldier-courtier had obtained considerable fame by becoming his Quintus Curtius. His Commentaries on the Wars against the Protestants of Germany, first published in 1546, had been several times reprinted, and had already been translated into Latin, French, Flemish, English, and Italian. Having married the wealthy heiress of the Zuñigas, he was now living in laurelled ease at Plasencia, in that fine palace of Mirabel, which is still one of the chief ornaments of the beautiful city. The memoirs of the campaigns in Africa, which he is said to have left in manuscript, were perhaps the occupation of his leisure. Charles always received his historian with kindness, and it is characteristic of the times, that it was noted as a mark of singular favor, that he ordered a capon to be reserved for him from his own well-supplied board. It may seem strange that a retired prince, who had never been a lover of parade, should not have broken through the ceremonial law which condemned a monarch to eat alone. But we must remember that he was a Spaniard living amongst Spaniards; and that, near a century later, the force of forms was still so strong, that the great minister of France, when most wanting in ships, preferred that the Spanish fleet should retire from the blockade of Rochelle rather than that the admiral should wear his grandee hat in the Most Christian presence.
The emperor was fond of talking over his feats of arms with the veteran who had shared and recorded them. One day, in the course of such conversation, Don Luis said he had caused a ceiling of his house to be painted in fresco, with a view of the battle of Renti, and the Frenchmen flying before the soldiers of Castille. "Not so," said Charles; "let the painter modify this if he can; for it was no headlong flight, but an honorable retreat." This was not the less candid, that French historians claim the victory for their own side. Considering that the action had been fought only three or four years before it was said to have been painted, it is possible that Renti has been substituted for the name of some other less doubtful field. But Luis de Avila was of easy faith when the honor of Castille was concerned, and may well be supposed capable of setting down a success to the wrong account, when he did not hesitate to record it in his book, that the miracle of Ajalon had been repeated at Muhlberg. Some years afterwards, the duke of Alva, who had been in that battle, was asked by the French king whether he had observed that the sun stood still. "I was so busy that day," said the old soldier, "with what was passing on earth, that I had no time to notice what took place in heaven."