I have gone somewhat into detail in regard to the latter days of Charles the Fifth, who exercised, in his retirement, too important an influence on public affairs for such an account of him to be deemed an impertinent episode to the history of Philip the Second. Before parting from him for ever, I will take a brief view of some peculiarities in his personal, rather than his political character, which has long since been indelibly traced by a hand abler than mine.
Charles, at the time of his death, was in the fifty-eighth year of his age. He was older in constitution than in years. So much shaken had he been, indeed, in mind as well as body, that he may be said to have died of premature old age. Yet his physical development had been very slow. He was nearly twenty-one years old before any beard was to be seen on his chin.[347] Yet by the time he was thirty-six, gray hairs began to make their appearance on his temples. At forty the gout had made severe inroads on a constitution originally strong; and before he was fifty, the man who could keep the saddle day and night in his campaigns, who seemed to be insensible to fatigue as he followed the chase among the wild passes of the Alpuxarras, was obliged to be carried in a litter, like a poor cripple, at the head of his armies.[348]
His mental development was equally tardy with his bodily. So long as Chievres lived,--the Flemish noble who had the care of his early life,--Charles seemed to have no will of his own. During his first visit to Spain, where he came when seventeen years old, he gave so little promise, that those who approached him nearest could discern no signs of his future greatness. Yet the young prince seems to have been conscious that he had the elements of greatness within him, and he patiently bided his time. "_Nondum_"--"Not yet"--was the motto which he adopted for his maiden shield, when but eighteen years old, at a tournament at Valladolid.
But when the death of the Flemish minister had released the young monarch from this state of dependence, he took the reins into his own hands, as Louis the Fourteenth did on the death of Mazarin. He now showed himself in an entirely new aspect. He even displayed greater independence than his predecessors had done. He no longer trusted everything, like them, to a council of state. He trusted only to himself; and if he freely communicated with some one favorite minister, like the elder Granvelle, and the cardinal, his son, it was in order to be counselled, not to be controlled by their judgments. He patiently informed himself of public affairs; and when foreign envoys had their audiences of him, they were surprised to find him possessed of everything relating to their own courts and the objects of their mission.