CHAPTER XIX.

A short time after, the Emperor Charles, accompanied by the Queen of
Hungary and several lords and ladies, took a ride in the open air for the
first time after long seclusion.

According to his custom, he had spent Passion week in the monastery.
Easter had come on the latest day possible--the twenty-fifth of April--
and when he bade farewell to the monks the gout had already attacked him
again.

Now he rode forth into the open country and the green woods like a
rescued man; the younger Granvelle, long as he had been in his service,
had never seen him so gay and unconstrained. He could now understand his
father's tales of his Majesty's better days, his vigorous manly strength
and eager delight in existence.

True, the period of anxiety concerning the tidings of political affairs
which had arrived the day before and that morning appeared to be over,
for Herr yon Parlowitz, the minister of Duke Maurice of Saxony, had
expressed his conviction that this active young monarch might be induced
to separate from the other Protestant princes and form an alliance with
the Emperor, especially as his Majesty had not the most distant intention
of mingling; religious matters in the war that was impending.

Despatches had also been sent from Valladolid by Don Philip, the