rights. His father and grandfather were both highly diverted with this
manifestation of spirit, but it was not decreed that the world should
witness the execution of these fraternal intentions against the babe
which was never to be born.

Ferocity, in short, seems to have been the leading characteristic of the
unhappy Carlos. His preceptor, a man of learning and merit, who was
called "the honorable John", tried to mitigate this excessive ardor of
temperament by a course of Cicero de Officiis, which he read to him
daily. Neither the eloquence of Tully, however, nor the precepts of the
honorable John made the least impression upon this very savage nature.
As he grew older he did not grow wiser nor more gentle. He was
prematurely and grossly licentious. All the money which as a boy, he was
allowed, he spent upon women of low character, and when he was penniless,
he gave them his chains, his medals, even the clothes from his back.
He took pleasure in affronting respectable females when he met them in
the streets, insulting them by the coarsest language and gestures.
Being cruel, cunning, fierce and licentious, he seemed to combine many
of the worst qualities of a lunatic. That he probably was one is the
best defence which can be offered for his conduct. In attempting to
offer violence to a female, while he was at the university of Alcala, he
fell down a stone staircase, from which cause he was laid up for a long
time with a severely wounded head, and was supposed to have injured his
brain.

The traits of ferocity recorded of him during his short life are so
numerous that humanity can hardly desire that it should have been
prolonged. A few drops of water having once fallen upon his head from a
window, as he passed through the street, he gave peremptory orders to his
guard to burn the house to the ground, and to put every one of its