To this the king replied, that, though his feelings moved him to follow the suggestions of his ministers, his conscience would not permit it. He could not think that he should consult the good of his people by placing over them a monarch so vicious in his disposition, and so fierce and sanguinary in his temper, as Carlos. However agonizing it might be to his feelings as a father, he must allow the law to take its course. Yet, after all, he said, it might not be necessary to proceed to this extremity. The prince's health was in so critical a state, that it was only necessary to relax the precautions in regard to his diet, and his excesses would soon conduct him to the tomb! One point only was essential, that he should be so well advised of his situation that he should be willing to confess, and make his peace with Heaven before he died. This was the greatest proof of love which he could give to his son and to the Spanish nation.
Ruy Gomez and Espinosa both of them inferred from this singular ebullition of parental tenderness, that they could not further the real intentions of the king better than by expediting as much as possible the death of Carlos. Ruy Gomez accordingly communicated his views to Olivares, the prince's physician. This he did in such ambiguous and mysterious phrase as, while it intimated his meaning, might serve to veil the enormity of the crime from the eyes of the party who was to perpetrate it. No man was more competent to this delicate task than the prince of Eboli, bred from his youth in courts, and trained to a life of dissimulation. Olivares readily comprehended the drift of his discourse,—that the thing required of him was to dispose of the prisoner, in such a way that his death should appear natural, and that the honor of the king should not be compromised. He raised no scruples, but readily signified his willingness faithfully to execute the will of his sovereign. Under these circumstances, on the twentieth of July, a purgative dose was administered to the unsuspecting patient, who, as may be imagined, rapidly grew worse. It was a consolation to his father, that, when advised of his danger, Carlos consented to receive his confessor. Thus, though the body perished, the soul was saved.[1511]
Such is the extraordinary account given us by Llorente, which, if true, would at once settle the question in regard to the death of Carlos. But Llorente, with a disingenuousness altogether unworthy of an historian in a matter of so grave import, has given us no knowledge of the sources whence his information was derived. He simply says, that they are "certain secret memoirs of the time, full of curious anecdote, which, though not possessing precisely the character of authenticity, are nevertheless entitled to credit, as coming from persons employed in the palace of the king!"[1512] Had the writer condescended to acquaint us with the names, or some particulars of the characters, of his authors, we might have been able to form some estimate of the value of their testimony. His omission to do this may lead us to infer, that he had not perfect confidence in it himself. At all events it compels us to trust the matter entirely to his own discretion, a virtue which those familiar with his inaccuracies in other matters will not be disposed to concede to him in a very eminent degree.[1513][{484}]
His narrative, moreover, is in direct contradiction to the authorities I have already noticed, especially to the two foreign ministers so often quoted, who, with the advantages—not a few—that they possessed for obtaining correct information, were indefatigable in collecting it. "I say nothing," writes the Tuscan envoy, alluding, to the idle rumors of the town, "of gossip unworthy to be listened to. It is a hard thing to satisfy the populace. It is best to stick to the truth, without caring for the opinion of those who talk wildly of improbable matters, which have their origin in ignorance and malice."[1514]
Still, it cannot be denied, that suspicions of foul play to Carlos were not only current abroad, but were entertained by persons of higher rank than the populace at home,—where it could not be safe to utter them. Among others, the celebrated Antonio Perez, one of the household of the prince of Eboli, informs us, that, "as the king had found Carlos guilty, he was condemned to death by casuists and inquisitors. But in order that the execution of this sentence might not be brought too palpably before the public, they mixed for four months together a slow poison in his food."[1515]
This statement agrees, to a certain extent, with that of a noble Venetian, Pietro Giustiniani, then in Castile, who assured the historian De Thou, that "Philip having determined on the death of his son, obtained a sentence to that effect from a lawful judge. But in order to save the honor of the sovereign, the sentence was executed in secret, and Carlos was made to swallow some poisoned broth, of which he died some hours afterwards."[1516]
Some of the particulars mentioned by Antonio Perez may be thought to receive confirmation from an account given by the French minister, Fourquevaulx, in a letter dated about a month after the prince's arrest. "The prince," he says, "becomes visibly thinner and more dried up; and his eyes are sunk in his head. They give him sometimes strong soups and capon broths, in which amber and other nourishing things are dissolved, that he may not wholly lose his strength and fall into decrepitude. These soups are prepared privately in the chamber of Ruy Gomez, through which one passes into that of the prince."
VARIOUS ACCOUNTS.
It was not to be expected that a Castilian writer should have the temerity to assert that the death of Carlos was brought about by violence. Yet Cabrera, the best informed historian of the period, who, in his boyhood, had frequent access to the house of Ruy Gomez, and even to the royal palace, while he describes the excesses of Carlos as the cause of his untimely end,[{485}] makes some mysterious intimations, which, without any forced construction, seem to point to the agency of others in bringing about that event.[1517]
Strada, the best informed, on the whole, of the foreign writers of the period, and who, as a foreigner, had not the same motives for silence as a Spaniard, qualifies his account of the prince's death as having taken place in the natural-way, by saying, "if indeed he did not perish by violence."[1518]—The prince of Orange, in his bold denunciation of Philip, does not hesitate to proclaim him the murderer of his son.[1519] And that inquisitive gossip-monger, Brantôme, amidst the bitter jests and epigrams which, he tells us, his countrymen levelled at Philip for his part in this transaction, quotes the authority of a Spaniard of rank for the assertion that, after Carlos had been condemned by his father,—in opposition to the voice of his council,—the prince was found dead in his chamber, smothered with a towel![1520] Indeed, the various modes of death assigned to him are sufficient evidence of the uncertainty as to any one of them.[1521] A writer of more recent date does not scruple to assert, that the only liberty granted to Carlos was that of selecting the manner of his death out of several kinds that were proposed to him;[1522]—an incident which has since found a more suitable place in one of the many dramas that have sprang from his mysterious story.