thus driven from power, and the government was intrusted to the
creatures of Porto Carrero. The King left the city in which he
had suffered so cruel an insult for the magnificent retreat of
the Escurial. Here his hypochondriac fancy took a new turn. Like
his ancestor Charles the Fifth, he was haunted by the strange
curiosity to pry into the secrets of that grave to which he was
hastening. In the cemetery which Philip the Second had formed
beneath the pavement of the church of St. Lawrence, reposed three
generations of Castilian princes. Into these dark vaults the
unhappy monarch descended by torchlight, and penetrated to that
superb and gloomy chamber where, round the great black crucifix,
were ranged the coffins of the kings and queens of Spain. There
he commanded his attendants to open the massy chests of bronze in
which the relics of his predecessors decayed. He looked on the
ghastly spectacle with little emotion till the coffin of his
first wife was unclosed, and she appeared before him--such was
the skill of the embalmer--in all her well-remembered beauty. He
cast one glance on those beloved features, unseen for eighteen
years, those features over which corruption seemed to have no
power, and rushed from the vault, exclaiming, "She is with God;
and I shall soon be with her." The awful sight completed the ruin
of his body and mind. The Escurial became hateful to him; and he
hastened to Aranjuez. But the shades and waters of that delicious
island-garden, so fondly celebrated in the sparkling verse of
Calderon, brought no solace to their unfortunate master. Having
tried medicine, exercise, and amusement in, vain, he returned to
Madrid to die.

He was now beset on every side by the bold and skilful agents of
the House of Bourbon. The leading politicians of his Court