beasts nor little men could dispel the black thoughts which
gathered in his mind, he repeated Aves and Credos; he walked in
processions; sometimes he starved himself; sometimes he whipped
himself. At length a complication of maladies completed the ruin
of all his faculties. His stomach failed; nor was this strange;
for in him the malformation of the jaw, characteristic of his
family, was so serious that he could not masticate his food; and
he was in the habit of swallowing ollas and sweetmeats in the
state in which they were set before him. While suffering from
indigestion he was attacked by ague. Every third day his
convulsive tremblings, his dejection, his fits of wandering,
seemed to indicate the approach of dissolution. His misery was
increased by the knowledge that every body was calculating how
long he had to live, and wondering what would become of his
kingdoms when he should be dead. The stately dignitaries of his
household, the physicians who ministered to his diseased body,
the divines whose business was to soothe his not less diseased
mind, the very wife who should have been intent on those gentle
offices by which female tenderness can alleviate even the misery
of hopeless decay, were all thinking of the new world which was
to commence with his death, and would have been perfectly willing
to see him in the hands of the embalmer if they could have been
certain that his successor would be the prince whose interest
they espoused. As yet the party of the Emperor seemed to
predominate. Charles had a faint sort of preference for the House
of Austria, which was his own house, and a faint sort of
antipathy to the House of Bourbon, with which he had been
quarrelling, he did not well know why, ever since he could
remember. His Queen, whom he did not love, but of whom he stood
greatly in awe, was devoted to the interests of her kinsman the