An anecdote of Avila and his master, though not falling within the period of their retirement to Estremadura, may be related here, as serving to show the characters of the two men. Some years before his abdication, Charles had amused the leisure of his sick-room by making a prose translation of Olivier de la Marches' forgotten allegorical poem, Le Chevalier deliberé. He then employed Fernando de Acunha, a man of letters attached to the Saxon court, to turn his labors into Castillian verse, and he finally handed it over to William Van Male, one of the gentlemen of the chamber, telling him that he might publish it for his own benefit. Avila and the other Spaniards, hearing of the concession, wickedly affected the greatest envy at the good fortune of the Fleming; the historian, in particular, in his quality of author, assuring the emperor that the publication could not fail to realize a profit of five hundred crowns. That desire to print, which, more or less developed, exists in every man who writes, being thus stimulated by the suggestion, that to gratify that desire, would be to confer a favor which should cost him nothing, Charles became impatient to see his lucubrations in type. Insisting that his bounty should be accepted at once, he turned a deaf ear to the timid hints of Van Male, as to the risk and expense of the speculation; and the end was, that the poor man had to pay Jean Steels for printing and publishing two thousand copies of a book which is now scarce, probably because the greater part of the impression passed at once from the publisher to the pastry-cook. The waggery on the part of Avila was the more wicked, because the victim had translated his Commentaries into Latin for him. It forms, however, the subject of an agreeable letter, wherein Van Male complains of the undue expectations raised in the emperor's mind by his "windy Spaniards," and ruefully looks forward to reaping a harvest of mere straw and chaff.
It was not only by calling at Yuste that the noble lieges of the emperor testified their homage. Mules were driven to his gate laden with more substantial tokens of loyalty and affection. The Count of Oropesa kept his table supplied with game from the forest and the hill; and the prelates of Toledo, Mondoñedo, Segovia, and Salamanca, offered similar proofs that they had not forgotten the giver of their mitres. The Jeromites of Guadalupe, rich in sheep and beeves, sent calves, lambs fattened on bread, and delicate fruits; and from his sister Catharine, queen of Portugal, there came every fortnight a supply of conserves and linen.
The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course, left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit. Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be light.
To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven, of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice. The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be punished with a hundred stripes.
In the month of September, 1557, the emperor received a visit from his sisters, the queens Eleanor and Mary. These royal widows, weary of Guadalaxara, its unyielding duke, and its troublesome alcalde, were once more in search of a residence. They had cast their eyes on the banks of the Guadiana, and they were now on their way to that frontier of Portugal. Neither the convent nor the palace of Yuste being sufficiently commodious to receive them, they lived at Xarandilla, as guests of Oropesa. The shattered health of the queen of France rendered the journey from the castle to the convent, although performed in a litter, so fatiguing to her, that she accomplished it only twice. Nor was her brother's strength sufficient to enable him to return the visits of his favorite sister. But queen Mary was seven years younger, and still possessed much of the vigor which amazed Roger Ascham, when he met her galloping into Tongres, far ahead of her suit, although it was the tenth day she had passed in the saddle. She therefore mounted her horse almost every day, and rode through the fading forest to converse with the recluse at Yuste. At the end of a fortnight, the queens took a sorrowful leave of their brother, and proceeded on their way to Badajoz, whither the Infanta Mary of Portugal, daughter of queen Eleanor, had come from Lisbon to receive them. After this meeting, which was destined to be the last, the queens returned to the little town of Talaverilla, on the bare plains of Merida, where they had determined to fix their abode. But they found there no continuing city. In a few weeks, Eleanor was seized with a fever, which carried her off on the 25th of February, 1558, the sixtieth year of her age. When the emperor heard of her illness, he dispatched Luis Quixada to attend upon her; but she was already at rest ere the mayordomo reached Talaverilla. Queen Mary went back with Quixada to Yuste. Her health being much shaken, and the emperor being unable to move from the convent, she was lodged, on this occasion, in his apartments. At the end of eight days she bade him a last farewell, and retired to Cigales, a hamlet two leagues north of Valladolid, and crowning a vine-clad hill on the western side of the valley of the Pisuerga.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Sandoval says he left on the 4th November; Cabrera, that he left on the 1st; and Siguenca gives the end of October as the time of his departure.