That the grave-worms should do their office before soul and body were
parted, was a torment such as the imagination of Dante might have
invented for the lowest depths of his "Inferno."

[A great English poet has indeed expressed the horrible thought:--

"It is as if the dead could feel
The icy worm about them steal:"--BYRON.]

On the 22nd July, the king asked Dr. Mercado if his sickness was likely
to have a fatal termination. The physician, not having the courage at
once to give the only possible reply, found means to evade the question.
On the 1st August his Majesty's confessor, father Diego de Yepes, after
consultation with Mercado, announced to Philip that the only issue to his
malady was death. Already he had been lying for ten days on his back, a
mass of sores and corruption, scarcely able to move, and requiring four
men to turn him in his bed.

He expressed the greatest satisfaction at the sincerity which had now
been used, and in the gentlest and most benignant manner signified his
thanks to them for thus removing all doubts from his mind, and for giving
him information which it was of so much importance for his eternal
welfare to possess.

His first thought was to request the papal nuncio, Gaetano, to despatch a
special courier to Rome to request the pope's benediction. This was
done, and it was destined that the blessing of his Holiness should arrive
in time.