and who had of late years been a confirmed valetudinarian, had been
rapidly failing ever since the transfer of the Netherlands in May.
Longing to be once more in his favourite retirement of the Escorial,
he undertook the journey towards the beginning of June, and was carried
thither from Madrid in a litter borne by servants, accomplishing the
journey of seven leagues in six days.

When he reached the palace cloister, he was unable to stand. The gout,
his life-long companion, had of late so tortured him in the hands and
feet that the mere touch of a linen sheet was painful to him. By the
middle of July a low fever had attacked him, which rapidly reduced his
strength. Moreover, a new and terrible symptom of the utter
disintegration of his physical constitution had presented itself.
Imposthumes, from which he had suffered on the breast and at the joints,
had been opened after the usual ripening applications, and the result was
not the hoped relief, but swarms of vermin, innumerable in quantities,
and impossible to extirpate, which were thus generated and reproduced in
the monarch's blood and flesh.

The details of the fearful disorder may have attraction for the
pathologist, but have no especial interest for the general reader. Let
it suffice, that no torture ever invented by Torquemada or Peter Titelman
to serve the vengeance of Philip and his ancestors or the pope against
the heretics of Italy or Flanders, could exceed in acuteness the agonies
which the most Catholic king was now called upon to endure. And not one
of the long line of martyrs, who by decree of Charles or Philip had been
strangled, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, ever faced a death of
lingering torments with more perfect fortitude, or was sustained by more
ecstatic visions of heavenly mercy, than was now the case with the great
monarch of Spain.