We are told by a Venetian envoy at his court, in the latter part of his
reign, that, while still in bed in the morning, he was served with potted
capon, prepared with sugar, milk, and spices, and then went to sleep
again. At noon a meal of various dishes was served him, and another after
vespers. In the evening he supped heartily on anchovies, of which he was
particularly fond, or some other gross and savory food. His cooks were
often at their wits' end to devise some new dish, rich and highly seasoned
enough to satisfy his appetite, and his perplexed purveyor one day,
knowing Charles's passion for timepieces, told him "that he really did not
know what new dish he could prepare him, unless it were a _fricassee_ of
watches."
Charles drank as heartily as he ate. His huge repasts were washed down
with potations proportionately large. Iced beer was a favorite beverage,
with which he began on rising and kept up during the day. By way of a
stronger potation, Rhenish wine was much to his taste. Roger Ascham, who
saw him on St. Andrew's day dining at the feast of the Golden Fleece,
tells us: "He drank the best that I ever saw. He had his head in the glass
five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at
once of Rhenish."
It was this over-indulgence in the pleasures of the table that brought the
emperor to Yuste. His physician warned him in vain. His confessor wasted
admonitions on his besetting sin. Sickness and suffering vainly gave him
warning to desist. Indigestion troubled him; bilious disorders brought
misery to his overworked stomach. At length came gout, the most terrible
of his foes. This enemy gave him little rest day or night. The man who had
hunted in the mountains for days without fatigue, who had kept the saddle
day and night in his campaigns, who had held his own in the lists with the
best knights of Europe, was now a miserable cripple, carried, wherever he
went, in the litter of an invalid.
One would have thought that, in his monastic retreat, Charles would cease
to indulge in gastronomic excesses, but the retired emperor, with little
else to think of, gave as much attention to his appetite as ever. Yuste
was kept in constant communication with the rest of the world on matters
connected with the emperor's table. He was especially fond of fish and all
the progeny of the water,--eels, frogs, oysters, and the like. The trout of
the neighborhood were too small for his liking, so he had larger ones sent
from a distance. Potted fish--anchovies in particular--were favorite viands.
Eel pasty appealed strongly to his taste. Soles, lampreys, flounders
reached his kitchen from Seville and Portugal. The country around supplied
pork, mutton, and game. Sausages were sent him from a distance; olives
were brought from afar, as those near at hand were not to his liking.
Presents of sweetmeats and confectionery were sent him by ladies who
remembered his ancient tastes. In truth, Charles, tortured with gout, did
everything he well could to favor its attacks.
The retired emperor, though he made a monastery his abode, had no idea of
living like a monk. His apartments were richly furnished and hung with
handsome tapestry, and every attention was paid to his personal comfort.
Rich carpets, canopies of velvet, sofas and chairs of carved walnut, seats
amply garnished with cushions for the ease of his tender joints, gave a
luxurious aspect to his retirement. His wardrobe contained no less than
sixteen robes of silk and velvet, lined with ermine, eider-down, or the
soft hair of the Barbary goat. He could not endure cold weather, and had
fireplaces and chimneys constructed in every room, usually keeping his
apartments almost at furnace heat, much to the discomfort of his
household. With all this, and his wrappings of fur and eider-down, he
would often be in a shiver and complain that he was chilled to the bone.
His table was richly provided with plate, its service being of silver, as
were also the articles of the toilet, the basins, pitchers, and other
utensils of his bed-chamber. With these were articles of pure gold,
valuable for their curious workmanship. He had brought with him many
jewels of value, and a small but choice collection of paintings, some of
them among the noblest masterpieces of art. Among them were eight gems
from the hand of Titian. These were hung in rich frames around his rooms.
He was no reader, and had brought few books, his whole library comprising
but thirty-one volumes, and these mostly religious works, such as
psalters, missals, breviaries, and the like. There was some little science
and some little history, but the work which chiefly pleased him was a
French poem, "_Le Chevalier Delibere_," then popular, which celebrated the
exploits of the house of Burgundy, and especially of Charles the Bold.
And now it comes in place to say something of how Charles employed himself
at Yuste, aside from eating and drinking and shivering in his chimney
corner. The mode in which a monarch retired from business passes his time
cannot be devoid of interest. He by no means gave up his attention to the
affairs of the realm, but kept himself well informed in all that was going
on, sometimes much to his annoyance, since blunders were made that gave
him a passing desire to be again at the head of affairs. In truth, two
years after his retirement, the public concerns got into such a snarl that
Philip earnestly sought to induce the emperor to leave his retreat and aid
him with his ripened experience. This Charles utterly refused to do. He
had had his fill of politics. It was much less trouble to run a household
than a nation. But he undertook to do what he could to improve the
revenues of the crown. Despatches about public affairs were brought to him
constantly, and his mental thermometer went up or down as things prospered
or the reverse. But he was not to be tempted to plunge again into the
turbulent tide of public affairs.
Charles had other and more humble duties to occupy his time. His paroxysms
of gout came only at intervals, and in the periods between he kept himself
engaged. He had a taste for mechanics, and among his attendants was an
Italian named Torriano, a man of much ingenuity, who afterwards
constructed the celebrated hydraulic works at Toledo. He was a skilful
clock-maker, and, as Charles took a special interest in timepieces, his
assistant furnished his apartments with a series of elaborate clocks. One
of these was so complicated that its construction occupied more than three
years, every detail of the work being curiously watched by Charles.
Watches were then of recent invention, yet there were a number of them at
Yuste, made by Torriano.
The attempt to make his clocks keep time together is said to have been one
of the daily occupations of the retired emperor, and the adjustment of his
clocks and watches gave him so much trouble that he is said to have one
day remarked that it was absurd to try and make men think alike, when, do
what he would, he could not make two of his timepieces agree.
He often amused himself with Torriano in making little puppets,--soldiers
that would go through their exercises, dancing tambourine-girls, etc. It
is even asserted that they constructed birds that would fly in and out of
the window, a story rather difficult to accept. The monks began to look
upon Torriano as a professor of magic when he invented a handmill small
enough to be hidden in a friar's sleeve, yet capable of grinding enough
meal in a day to last a man for a week.
The emperor was very fond of music, particularly devotional music, and was
a devotee in religious exercises, spending much of his time in listening
to the addresses of the chaplains, and observing the fasts and festivals
of the Church. His fondness for fish made the Lenten season anything but a
period of penance for him.
He went on, indeed, eating and drinking as he would; and his disease went
on growing and deepening, until at length the shadow of death lay heavy on
the man whose religion did not include temperance in its precepts. During
1558 he grew steadily weaker, and on the 21st of September the final day
came; his eyes quietly closed and life fled from his frame.
Yuste, famous as the abiding-place of Charles in his retirement, remained
unmolested in the subsequent history of the country until 1810, when a
party of French dragoons, foraging near by, found the murdered body of one
of their comrades not far from the monastery gates. Sure in their minds
that the monks had killed him, they broke in, dispersed the inmates, and
set the buildings on fire. The extensive pile of edifices continued to
burn for eight days, no one seeking to quench the flames. On the ninth the
ancient monastery was left a heap of ashes, only the church remaining,
and, protected by it, the palace of Charles.
In 1820 a body of neighboring insurgents entered and defaced the remaining
buildings, carrying off everything they could find of value and turning
the church into a stable. Some of the monks returned, but in 1837 came an
act suppressing the convents, and the poor Jeronymites were finally turned
adrift. To-day the palace of Charles V. presents only desolate and dreary
chambers, used as magazines for grain and olives. So passes away the glory
of the world.