been suffered by Carlos. Secretary Erasso, the papal nuncio Castagna,
the Venetian envoy Cavalli, all express a conviction that the death of
the prince had been brought about by his own extravagant conduct and
mental excitement; by alternations of starving and voracious eating, by
throwing himself into the fire; by icing his bed, and by similar acts of
desperation. Nearly every writer alludes to the incident of the refusal
of the priest to admit Carlos to communion, upon the ground of his
confessed deadly hatred to an individual whom all supposed to be the
King. It was also universally believed that Carlos meant to kill his
father. The nuncio asked Spinosa (then president of Castile) if this
report were true. "If nothing more were to be feared," answered the
priest, "the King would protect himself by other measures," but the matter
was worse, if worse could be. The King, however, summoned all the
foreign diplomatic body and assured them that the story was false. After
his arrest, the Prince, according to Castagna, attempted various means
of suicide, abstaining, at last, many days from food, and dying in
consequence, "discoursing, upon his deathbed, gravely and like a man of
sense."

The historian Cabrera, official panegyrist of Philip the Second, speaks
of the death of Carlos as a natural one, but leaves a dark kind of
mystery about the symptoms of his disease. He states, that the Prince
was tried and condemned by a commission or junta, consisting of Spinosa,
Ruy Gomez, and the Licentiate Virviesca, but that he was carried off by
an illness, the nature of which he does not describe.

Llorente found nothing in the records of the Inquisition to prove that
the Holy Office had ever condemned the Prince or instituted any process
against him. He states that he was condemned by a commission, but that
he died of a sickness which supervened. It must be confessed that the