Philip's queen, Isabella, and his sister Joanna, who seem to have been deeply afflicted by the course taken with the prince, made ineffectual attempts to be allowed to visit him in his confinement; and when Don John of Austria came to the palace dressed in a mourning suit, to testify his grief on the occasion, Philip coldly rebuked his brother, and ordered him to change his mourning for his ordinary dress.[1485]
Several of the great towns were prepared to send their delegates to condole with the monarch under his affliction. But Philip gave them to understand, that he had only acted for the good of the nation, and that their condolence on the occasion would be superfluous.[1486] When the deputies of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia were on their way to court, with instructions to inquire into the cause of the prince's imprisonment, and to urge his speedy liberation, they received, on the way, so decided an intimation of the royal displeasure, that they thought it prudent to turn back, without venturing to enter the capital.[1487]
In short, it soon came to be understood, that the affair of Don Carlos was[{478}] a subject not to be talked about. By degrees, it seemed to pass out of men's minds, like a thing of ordinary occurrence. "There is as little said now on the subject of the prince," writes the French ambassador, Fourquevaulx, "as if he had been dead these ten years."[1488] His name, indeed, still kept its place, among those of the royal family, in the prayers said in the churches. But the king prohibited the clergy from alluding to Carlos in their discourses. Nor did any one venture, says the same authority, to criticize the conduct of the king. "So complete is the ascendancy which Philip's wisdom has given him over his subjects, that, willing or unwilling, all promptly obey him: and if they do not love him, they at least appear to do so."[1489]
Among the articles removed from the prince's chamber was a coffer, as the reader may remember, containing his private papers. Among these were a number of letters intended for distribution after his departure from the country. One was addressed to his father, in which Carlos avowed that the cause of his flight was the harsh treatment he had received from the king.[1490] Other letters, addressed to different nobles, and to some of the great towns, made a similar statement; and, after reminding them of the oath they had taken to him as successor to the crown, he promised to grant them various immunities when the sceptre should come into his hands.[1491] With these papers was also found one of most singular import. It contained a list of all those persons whom he deemed friendly, or inimical to himself. At the head of the former class stood the names of his step-mother, Isabella, and of his uncle Don John of Austria,—both of them noticed in terms of the warmest affection. On the catalogue of his enemies, "to be pursued to the death," were the names of the king, his father, the prince and princess of Eboli, Cardinal Espinosa, the duke of Alva, and others.[1492]—Such is the strange account of the contents of the coffer given to his court by the papal nuncio. These papers, we are told, were submitted to the judges who conducted the process, and formed, doubtless, an important part of the testimony against the prince. It may have been from one of the parties concerned that the nuncio gathered his information. Yet no member of that tribunal would have ventured to disclose its secrets without authority from Philip; who may possibly have consented to the publication of facts that would serve to vindicate his course. If these facts are faithfully reported, they must be allowed to furnish some evidence of a disordered mind in Carlos.
HIS EXCESSES.
The king, meanwhile, was scarcely less a prisoner than his son; for, from the time of the prince's arrest, he had never left the palace, even to visit his favorite residences of Aranjuez and the Prado; nor had he passed a single day in the occupation, in which he took such delight, of watching the rising glories of the Escorial. He seemed to be constantly haunted by the apprehension of some outbreak among the people, or at least among the partisans of Carlos, to effect his escape; and when he heard any unusual noise in the palace, says his historian, he would go to the window, to see if the tumult[{479}] were not occasioned by an attempt to release the prisoner.[1493] There was little cause for apprehension in regard to a people so well disciplined to obedience as the Castilians under Philip the Second. But it is an ominous circumstance for a prisoner, that he should become the occasion of such apprehension.
Philip, however, was not induced by his fears to mitigate in any degree the rigor of his son's confinement, which produced the effect to have been expected on one of his fiery, ungovernable temper. At first he was thrown into a state bordering on frenzy, and, it is said, more than once tried to make away with himself. As he found that thus to beat against the bars of his prison-house was only to add to his distresses, he resigned himself in sullen silence to his fate,—the sullenness of despair. In his indifference to all around him, he ceased to take an interest in his own spiritual concerns. Far from using the religious books in his possession, he would attend to no act of devotion, refusing even to confess, or to admit his confessor into his presence.[1494] These signs of fatal indifference, if not of positive defection from the Faith, gave great alarm to Philip, who would not willingly see the soul thus perish with the body.[1495] In this emergency he employed Suarez, the prince's almoner, who once had some influence over his master, to address him a letter of expostulation. The letter has been preserved, and is too remarkable to be passed by in silence.
Suarez begins with reminding Carlos that his rash conduct had left him without partisans or friends. The effect of his present course, instead of mending his condition, could only serve to make it worse. "What will the world say," continues the ecclesiastic, "when it shall learn that you now refuse to confess; when, too, it shall discover other dreadful things of which you have been guilty, some of which are of such a nature, that, did they concern any other than your highness, the Holy Office would be led to inquire whether the author of them were in truth a Christian?[1496] It is in the bitterness and anguish of my heart that I must declare to your highness, that you are not only in danger of forfeiting your worldly estate, but, what is worse, your own soul." And he concludes by imploring Carlos, as the only remedy, to return to his obedience to God, and to the king, who is his representative on earth.
But the admonitions of the honest almoner had as little effect on the unhappy youth as the prayers of his attendants. The mental excitement under which he labored, combined with the want of air and exercise, produced its natural effect on his health. Every day he became more and more emaciated; while the fever which had so long preyed on his constitution now burned in[{480}] his veins with greater fury than ever. To allay the intolerable heat, he resorted to such desperate expedients as seemed to intimate, says the papal nuncio, that, if debarred from laying violent hands on himself, he would accomplish the same end in a slower way, but not less sure. He deluged the floor with water, not a little to the inconvenience of the companions of his prison, and walked about for hours, half naked, with bare feet, on the cold pavement.[1497] He caused a warming-pan filled with ice and snow to be introduced several times in a night into his bed, and let it remain there for hours together.[1498] As if this were not enough, he would gulp down such draughts of snow-water as distance any achievement on record in the annals of hydropathy. He pursued the same mad course in respect to what he ate. He would abstain from food an incredible number of days,[1499] and then, indulging in proportion to his former abstinence, would devour a pastry of four partridges, with all the paste, at a sitting, washing it down with three gallons or more of iced water![1500]
No constitution could long withstand such violent assaults as these. The constitution of Carlos gradually sank under them. His stomach, debilitated by long inaction, refused to perform the extraordinary tasks that were imposed on it. He was attacked by incessant vomiting; dysentery set in; and his strength rapidly failed. The physician, Olivares, who alone saw the patient, consulted with his brethren in the apartments of Ruy Gomez.[1501] Their remedies failed to restore the exhausted energies of nature; and it was soon evident that the days of Charles were numbered.