Chapter X: Preface (10)

The most powerful person at Court next to the Queen was Father Matilla, the King's confessor, whose hand was everywhere, and who said on one occasion that he would much rather make bishops than be one. Then came the other members of the Queen's camarilla, an obscure country lawyer who had been created Count Adanero, and Minister of Finance and the Indies, who provided the crew with money to their hearts' content, and squandered and muddled away the national resources, whilst all Spain was groaning under impossible imposts; Madame Berlips, a German woman who had an extraordinary influence over the Queen, and an insatiable greed; two Italian monks, and a mutilated musician of the Royal Chapel. There were two great nobles also who, after several periods of disgrace and hesitation, had at last thrown themselves on to the Queen's side--the Admiral of Castile and Count Oropesa, the ostensibly responsible ministers; but these practically only carried out the designs of the Queen's camarilla, and were content with the appearance and profits of power without its exercise. The populace, as may be imagined, were in deadly opposition to the Queen and her foreign surroundings, and were strongly in favour of one of the younger French princes whom they might adopt and make a Spaniard of, as they never could hope to do with a German archduke, and thus, as they thought, avoid the threatened partition of their {296} country.[5] This was the position of things in March, 1698, when the King, who had partly recovered from his previous attack eighteen months before, was again taken ill.[6] He was dragged out by the Queen to totter and stagger in religious processions, was made to go through the ceremonial forms of his position, nodding and babbling incoherently to ministers and ambassadors whom he was obliged to receive, and at last, weary and sick to death, haunted by an unquiet conscience and with the appalling fear of hourly poison, he sent word by a trusty messenger to the wise, crafty old minister of his mother, Cardinal Portocarrero, who had been banished from the Court by the Queen, that he wished to see him.

The Cardinal needed no two invitations, but posted off to the palace. He had still plenty of {297} friends of various ranks, notwithstanding the Queen, and amongst them was Count de Benavente, the Gentleman of the Bedchamber. By him he was conducted at night to the King's bed-side, after the Queen had retired, and heard the heart-broken recital of the monarch's troubles. The King told him he was ill and unhappy and in trouble about his soul's health. He was conscious of a struggle going on within him between his knowledge of the right thing to do and his incapacity to do it, and this left him no peace or happiness. The people who surrounded him were distasteful to him, his confessor, Matilla, gave him no real consolation, and he ascribed much of his own illness and misery to the bad management and ceaseless worry he had to endure from those who had the direction of affairs. The King unburdened himself to the Cardinal in his lisping, mumbling fashion, his utterance broken with sobs and tears, but sufficiently plainly for Portocarrero to see that if he and his friends acted boldly, swiftly, and secretly they might again become predominant and dispose of the splendid inheritance of Spain and the Indies. He said some consoling, soothing words to the King, and promised him that steps should be taken to insure him tranquillity, and then he took his leave. The interview took place in the ancient Alcazar, which stood on the site of the present royal palace in Madrid, for poor Carlos had no spirits for the new Buen Retiro Palace, where his father had been so gay and splendid. It was nearly eleven o'clock at night, but as soon as the Cardinal got back to his own house he summoned his friends to a private conference. They were all of them {298} courtiers in disgrace with the Queen, and most of them extremely popular with the mob in Madrid. There was Count Monterey, mild and temporising, with his hesitating speech and his irritating "hems and hahs"; there was the Marquis of Leganes, a hot-headed soldier, rash and pugnacious; Don Francisco Ronquillo, ambitious, intriguing, and bold, who, with his brother, was the idol of the "chulos" of the capital; Don Juan Antonio Urraca, honest, uncouth, and boorish; and, above all, quiet, wise, and prudent Don Sebastian de Cotes, a close friend of the Cardinal's. First, Monterey was invited to give his opinion as to what should be done, but he dwelt mainly upon the danger to them all presented from the King's infirmity of purpose; and how one minister after the other who had for a moment succeeded in persuading him to make a stand, had been disgraced and banished the moment the Queen got access to her husband and twisted him round her finger, as she could. He had no desire to take risks, apparently, and could recommend nothing but that the Cardinal Archbishop should keep his footing in the palace, and gradually work upon the King's mind. Leganes scoffed at such timid counsels; where the disease was so violent as this a strong remedy must be adopted. This should be the immediate banishment, and, if necessary, the imprisonment of the Admiral of Castile, the principal minister. He (Leganes) had plenty of arms at home, and had hundreds of men in Madrid who would serve him, with experienced officers to command them, and could soon make short work of the Admiral and his train of poets and buffoons. Ronquillo went {299} further still. He said that was all very well, but at the same time they must seize the Queen and shut her up at the Huelgas de Burgos. Monterey called him a fool, and said such an act would be the death of the King and would ruin them all before he could alter his will; and the two nobles rushed at each other to fight out the question on the spot before the Archbishop himself. When they were separated the Cardinal no doubt thought it was time to do something practical, and asked his friend Cotes his opinion. Cotes was prosy enough, but practical. He said of course Portocarrero could easily get the King to sign any decree he liked, but the Queen could more easily still get him to revoke it; and, although it would be well to strike at the Queen herself, he did not know who would dare to do it. But after all she could only influence him by mundane means; the confessor, Matilla, whom the King hated and feared, and flouted only yesterday, must be got rid of, and the Queen would lose her principal instrument. This was approved of, but no one could suggest a fitting successor except Ronquillo--who, of course, had a nominee of his own!--who was promptly vetoed. Each of the others doubtless had one too, but thought best to press his claims privately. So it was left to the Archbishop to choose a new successor and gain the King's consent to his appointment. The choice fell upon a certain Froilan Diaz, professor of theology at the University of Alcalá. One of his recommendations was that he was near enough to the capital to be brought thither quickly, before the affair got wind, and no sooner did the Ronquillos learn that Cotes had recommended him to the {300} Archbishop than they sent a mounted messenger post-haste to Alcalá to inform Father Froilan of his coming greatness, and claim for themselves the credit of his appointment.

A few days afterwards, in the afternoon, the King lay in bed languidly listening to the music which was being played in the outer chamber, with which his own room communicated by an open door. The outer room, as usual, was crowded with courtiers, and in the deep recess of a window stood the confessor, Matilla, chatting with a friend, alert and watchful of all that passed. Suddenly Count de Benavente entered with a stout, fresh-coloured ecclesiastic, quiet and modest of mien and unknown to all. They walked across the presence chamber without announcement, and entered the King's chamber, shutting the door behind them. Matilla's face grew longer and his eyes wider as he saw this, and he knew instinctively that his day was over. Turning to his friend, he said, "Good-bye; this is beginning where it ought to have left off," and with that he left the palace, and went with the conviction of disaster to his monastery of the Rosario. They had all known for some days that something had been brewing. Spies had dogged every footstep of the Archbishop and those who attended the midnight meeting at his house, but they had left out of account the King's own Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Count de Benavente, who had arranged the whole affair. It is true that when the Queen had, as usual, entered the King's bedroom that day, at eleven o'clock, to see him dine, he had told her in a whisper, unable to retain his secret, that he had changed his confessor. She, astounded and {301} disconcerted at the news, pretended to approve of the change--anything, she said, to give tranquillity to her dear Carlos. But when she could leave, she flew with all speed to her room, summoned the Admiral and the camarilla, and told them they were undone. Panic reigned supreme, the general idea being that Matilla himself had betrayed them. In any case they saw that he was past praying for, so they threw him overboard, and decided to try to save themselves, and see if, in time, they could not buy over the new confessor.

The only man of them who kept his head was a great ecclesiastic, a brother of the Admiral of Aragon, and of a member of the Council of the Inquisition, one Folch de Cardona, Commissary-General of the Order of San Francisco, who was subsequently to play an important part in the tragi-comedy. When Matilla learnt that the Queen and her friends had known of the change an hour or two before it happened he broke down. "Oh, for that hour!" he exclaimed; "in it I would have set it all right." Divested of all his offices, dismissed from his inquisitorship, with a pension of 2,000 ducats, he died within a week of poison or a broken heart, and he disappears from the scene.

In his place stands Froilan Diaz, a simple-minded tool of the courtiers who had appointed him. He did not look very terrible, even to the panic-stricken Queen and her friends, and they decided to make the best of him, and try to confine the changes to the confessorship. Henceforward Froilan Diaz was a man to be courted and flattered. Honours and wealth were lavished on him, and for a year no great change was {302} made in the palace or outside; but under the surface intrigue was busy, both at the King's bedside and in the haunts of the Madrid mob. At the end of a year the latter element made short work of the ministers and the Queen's gang and drove the lot of them out, to be replaced by Arias, the Ronquillos, and the French party; but with this revolt the present study has nothing to do.

The King's extreme decrepitude for a young man had several years before given rise to rumours amongst the vulgar that he was bewitched, and the assertion had been made the subject of grave consideration by the Grand Inquisitor of the time, who reported that he could find no evidence to act upon. At the time of the first serious illness of the King, in 1697, he had of his own action sent to the new Grand Inquisitor a terrible and austere Dominican monk called Rocaberti, and had confessed to him his conviction that his illness was not natural but the result of some maleficent charm, and besought him earnestly to have an exhaustive inquiry made. The Inquisitor told him that he would, if he pleased, have inquiry made, but saw no possible result could come of it, unless the King could point out some person whom he suspected or some plausible evidence to go upon. And so the matter remained until some weeks after Father Froilan had become confessor. As may be supposed, Froilan Diaz's elevation had reminded all his old friends of his existence, and, amongst others, an old fellow-student visited him, with whom he fell into talk about past days and former acquaintances. "And how is Father Argüelles getting on?" said the confessor. "Ah, poor fellow!" was the reply; "he is confessor {303} at a convent at Cangas, terribly ill, but in no-wise cast down, for the Devil himself has assured him in person that God is preserving him for a great work yet that shall resound through the world." The King's confessor pricked up his ears at this, and wanted further particulars. It appeared, according to the friend, that Argüelles had had much trouble with two nuns of his convent, who were possessed, and in the course of his exorcisms had become quite on intimate terms with his Satanic Majesty. Froilan thought this was too important to be neglected, so he consulted the Grand Inquisitor, the Dominican Rocaberti. The grim monk did not, apparently, much like the business, but consented to a letter being written to the Bishop of Oviedo, the superior of Argüelles, asking him to question his subordinate as to the truth of the assertion that the King was suffering from diabolical charms. The Bishop, determined that he would not be made the channel for such nonsense, wrote a sensible answer back, saying that he did not believe in the witchcraft story. All that ailed the King was a weakness of the heart and a too ready acquiescence in the Queen's wishes, so he would have nothing to do with it.

Then Froilan sent direct to Argüelles, who himself was afraid of the business unless he was secured from harm, and refused to put any questions to the Devil unless he had the warrant of the Grand Inquisitor. A letter was therefore written by the latter on June 18, 1698, ordering him to write the names of the King and Queen on a sheet of paper, and, without uttering them, to place the paper on his breast, summon the Devil, and ask him whether the persons whose names were so {304} written were suffering from witchcraft. Froilan sent the letter in a long one of his own to his old friend Argüelles with an elaborate cipher and other devices for secrecy in subsequent communications. No names henceforward were to be written. The vicar, Argüelles, replied, expressing no surprise at so strange a request, but said the Devil had previously told him that he was reserved for great things, but had not given particulars, only that he should receive an order from a superior. Then he tells the result obtained by his first effort. He says he placed the hands of the possessed nun upon the altar, and by the power of his incantations commanded the Devil to answer the question put to him. The Devil was not at all shy, but "swore by God Almighty that it was the truth that the King was bewitched," "et hoc ad destruendam materiam generationis in Rege et eum incapacem ponendum ad regnum administrandum." He said the charm had been administered by moonlight when the King was fourteen years of age.

So far the Devil. Then the vicar, as an expert, gives some advice of his own. He says the King should be given half a pint of oil to drink, fasting, with the benediction, and the ceremony of exorcism which the Church prescribes.[7] He {305} must not eat anything for some time afterwards, and everything he eats and drinks must be blessed. The case is a very bad one, he says, and a miracle will be performed. If the King can bear it he should be given, in addition, the charm prescribed by the Church, but not otherwise.

He gives the not improbable opinion that as the King will vomit dreadfully he must be held in the arms of the "master," by which name it was agreed that the Grand Inquisitor should be referred to in the correspondence. But he says not an hour is to be lost, and the master himself must administer the draught.

But this remedy was too strong, and Froilan and the Inquisitor, or the friend and the master, as they are called henceforward, write to say that, although they are much obliged to the Devil and the vicar, such a draught as that recommended would certainly kill the King, and they beg the exorciser to ask the Devil again for a more practical and a safer remedy. "How much and in what form is the Church charm to be given; at what hour; on what parts of the body?" And so on--queer questions indeed to be addressed by two pillars of the Church to the Devil. But this is not all. They draw up a series of questions that would do honour to a cross-examining barrister. "What is the proof of witchcraft? In what way does it act so as to make the King do things contrary to his own will? How are the organs affected cleansed by the charm? What compact was made with the Devil when the witchery was effected? Was it administered internally, or externally? {306} Who administered it? Has it been repeated? Is the Queen included in its operation?" And other questions of a similar sort. The vicar is rather shocked at their inquisitiveness, and refuses to put such questions. How can he ask the Devil anything that the Church does not deal with in its exorcising ceremonies?

Another letter is sent asking him to consult the Devil as to whether it will be well to take the King to Toledo, to which the vicar replies somewhat evasively, reproaching his associates. What is the good, he says, of all their professed desire to heal the King whilst they refuse to carry out the directions sent them? A change of place is useless if he takes the malady with him, and until they follow out the instructions already given it is no good for him to consult the Devil again. "Besides," he says, getting into dangerously deep water for a country vicar, "how can you expect the King to be well? Justice is not done, the churches are starved, hospitals are despoiled and closed, and souls are allowed to suffer in purgatory because money is begrudged for Masses, and above all, the King does not administer justice after swearing on the cross that he would do so. The Divine message has already been delivered to you. I have told you all it is fitting for you to know and how to cure the patient, and you do nothing but ask a lot more questions. I tell ye, then, that you will find no excuse for this at the supreme judgment, and the death of the King will be laid at your door, since you could cure him and will not." This was almost too bold to be borne, and the Inquisitor's secretary writes back in grave condemnation. He again {307} insists upon the questions being put to the Devil. "You are presumptuous to dare to suppose that you know better than the friend and the master, and that you can command in this way whilst refusing to obey. You want to get out of it now by attributing the King's illness to other causes. The 'friend and the master' are deeply offended, and if you do not do as you are commanded all will be frustrated, and we distressed to feel that, just as God had begun to open the door of knowledge to us, all is spoilt by your presumption and obstinacy."

After a good deal more of mutual recrimination the vicar gave way, and on September 9, 1698, he wrote that he had sworn the Devil on the holy sacrament, and he had declared that the charm had been administered to the King in a cup of chocolate on April 3, 1673. "I asked," he writes, "what the charm was made of, and he said three parts of a dead man." "What parts?" "Brain to take away his will, intestines to spoil his health, and kidney to ruin his virility." "Can we burn any sign to restore him?" "No, by the God that made you and me." "Was it a man or a woman who administered the charm?" "A woman; and she has already been judged." "Why did she do it?" "In order to reign." "When?" "In the day of Don Juan of Austria, whom she killed with a similar charm, only stronger."

This of course was directed against the late Queen-mother--a dangerous line to take, considering that the Cardinal Archbishop Portocarrero, whose creature Froilan was, had been her friend and minister. Lucifer continued, that the remedies were those that the Church prescribed. First, {308} drinking of blessed oil fasting; secondly, anointing the whole body with the oil; next, strong purges and absolute isolation of the King even from the sight of the Queen. Then the Devil got sulky, said he was tired and knew no more, and refused to say another word. The adoption of such a course as that prescribed, with a man who was dying already of exhaustion would have been murder; and of course the associates again hesitated, writing to the vicar directing him to inquire of the Devil if any witchery has been practised since the first, and why the King cannot do right when he wishes to, instead of being, as he complains, impelled to act wrongly against his will. It seems impossible that this can be the result of the original charm, particularly as the person who gave it is dead. Has anything been given since? "Yes," says the Devil, "in 1694, only four years ago, on September 24th, a similar charm was given in food and left no outward sign," and this the Devil swears by God and the Holy Trinity. Then Lucifer, tired of answering questions, apparently gives a bit of advice. He says they are thwarting Providence by their delay, and if they do not hurry up the King will be past help.

But again the friend and the master want more information, and on October 22nd write to say that it is of the highest importance that they should know the name and residence of the witch; who ordered her to act, and why. This the Devil absolutely refuses to answer; but as his past proceedings proved him to be a demon somewhat infirm of purpose, they do not seem to have been at all discouraged, but a week or so afterwards return to the charge with a {309} perfect catechism, which they order the vicar to put to his diabolical interlocutor. "Who was the witch? What was her name, condition, and residence? Who ordered the charm, and why? Who got the corpse and prepared the conjuration? Who handed the chocolate to the King? Had the witch any children?" And so on at great length. The answer came from the vicar on October 7th, in which the Devil seems to have made quite a clean breast of it. The Queen-mother, he said, had ordered the first charm; the first witch was a woman named Casilda, married, with two sons, who lived away from her. The go-between was Valenzuela (the Queen-mother's favourite), and the witch had no accomplice but the Devil. She sought the corpse and prepared the charm, and handed it to Valenzuela. The second charm, in 1694, was administered by one who wishes for the _fleur-de-lis_ in Spain; one who is a great adulator of the King, but hates him bitterly. The Devil could not mention names, he said, but they knew the person well. This witch was a famous one named Maria, living in the Calle Mayor; but he could not give the number of the house or her surname.

The Grand Inquisitor's secretary wrote in answer to this, thanking him, but regretting that his information was so limited. The street mentioned as the residence of the first witch, namely, the Calle de Herreros, did not exist in Madrid, and the friend and the master beg the vicar to ask his friend the Devil for more information as to the houses and husbands of both witches, "as to seek a Maria in the High Street of Madrid was like looking for a needle in a haystack." They want also the name {310} of the person who ordered the second charm, and the secretary ends his letter with an astounding invocation of the Devil's aid. He is conjured in the names of God, of His holy Mother, and of St. Simeon of Jerusalem, the King's patron saint, to intercede with God, "who, the lessons tell us, is a relative," to aid in the King's recovery. No reply appears to have been received to this letter, but it was soon followed by another, saying that the friend and the master have administered the charm recommended by the Devil, and the King is better; but they urgently beg for further aid from the same quarter, and more charms if possible. This letter was written on November 5, 1698, and produced two replies from the vicar, who said that he had been conjuring all the afternoon fruitlessly, and at last the Devil burst out in a rage, "Go away! don't bother me." In fact, it is quite clear at this point that the vicar, having got himself into a perfect net of confusion and contradiction, was getting very frightened indeed; and his next letter said the Devil was sulky, and would only reply to all his conjurations that he, the Devil, had been telling him a lot of lies and would say no more. All would be known by and by, but not yet. The vicar added to this a remark to the effect that all the King's doctors were false and disloyal, and should be dismissed; the doctor to be appointed in their place was to be chosen more for his attachment to the old Church than for his medical science, and, in the meanwhile, the King's abode and garments were to be changed and the exorcisms continued.

The vicar was thereupon again gravely rebuked {311} for daring to say that the King's physicians are disloyal, but they, the friend and the master, will refrain from employing them. A further letter of November 26th urges the vicar not to stand any more of the Devil's nonsense. Tell him he _must_ give the names and addresses, as the friend and the master are put to great trouble seeking them, and he is exhorted to be diligent in completing the good work he has begun, as the King is much better for the exorcisms administered to him. The doctors were, of course, nominees of the new dominant French party, and the friend and master did not like their loyalty to be called into question; but the vicar was firm, so they were changed, and the poor King was taken on his journey to Toledo and Alcalá. He certainly had got much better, and Stanhope ascribes his improvement to the plasters of his new Aragonese doctor, or "rather," he says, "what I believe has done more is that he has of late drunk two or three glasses of pure wine at every meal, whereas he has never taken anything before in all his life but water boiled with a little cinnamon."

As soon as the King was well enough, the intrigue that had been brewing since the new confessor had got a footing was completed, and the third claimant to the succession, the young Prince of Bavaria, was solemnly adopted as heir to the crown. This, of course, offended most of the great Powers of Europe, but it had the effect of reconciling with each other the Spanish courtiers who had espoused either the French or the Austrian cause, and for a few months, until the new heir died, the Court quarrels were patched up. Still the inquiries {312} of the Devil went on, and the vicar stumbled and blundered deeper into the mire. He tried to correct his mistake about the street where the first witch lived by saying that the street called Herreros was now the Cerrajeros, and the surname of the witch was Perez, the commonest name in Spain. The secretary wrote to say that the friend and the master could not make head or tail of it all, and begged the Devil to be more explicit--first he said the witch was alive, and then dead. The King was much better.

By this time, the beginning of the year 1699, the vicar evidently thought that, as he had so far come out of the affair with flying colours, he ought to be brought to the capital and placed on the main road of promotion, instead of being kept in a remote village: and he wrote that the Devil had declared that the whole truth could only be divulged in the church of the Virgin of Atocha in Madrid, and that as he, vicar, had begun it, so he must conduct the affair to the end. A week or two later he wrote, again pressing to be allowed to carry on the rest of the conjuration at the Atocha, in order, as he says, to reanimate the devotion to the image, which he thought was cooling. He gives the name of the second witch as Maria Diez, another extremely common name, and then falls ill, sulks, and refuses to invoke the Devil again except at the Atocha. Still his correspondents continue to press him for fresh signs and information, without result except to produce fresh demands that he should be brought to Madrid. The confederates, however, deemed this too dangerous, and the correspondence with Argüelles closes in the month of May, 1699.

{313}

About this time the Queen's suspicions were aroused by a hint dropped by the King, and she at once set spies around those who had access to the monarch's room, particularly Froilan Diaz. She soon learnt something of what was going on, and, as the chronicler says, "roared from very rage." She called her friends together, and in a tearing passion told them what she had discovered, demanding immediate vengeance on the King's confessor. Some of her friends, particularly Folch de Cardona, were cooler-headed than she was, and pointed out that as the Grand Inquisitor was mixed up in the business, it would be imprudent to take any steps until it was seen how far the holy tribunal itself was implicated, and that in any case the Queen's vengeance should be wreaked on Froilan by the action of the Inquisition if possible, so that she might avoid the unpopularity of appearing in the matter herself.

The next day Folch de Cardona sounded his inquisitor brother, and found that the Council of the Holy Office knew nothing of what was going on, and when the Inquisitor was informed and asked whether the tribunal would consider Froilan guilty if the facts were proved, he cautiously answered his brother that he would not venture of himself to decide, but personally he considered so much hobnobbing with the Devil both delicate and dangerous. In June the Grand Inquisitor Rocaberti died suddenly, probably of poison, and left Froilan to face the matter alone; and a few days afterwards a report was sent from Germany, having been transmitted to the Emperor by the Bishop of Vienna, containing a declaration, said to have been made by the Devil to {314} an exorciser in the church of St. Sophia, to the effect that Charles II. was bewitched by a certain woman called Isabel living in the Calle de Silva, in Madrid, and that if search were made the instruments of her incantations would be found beneath the threshold of her house. The Queen thought to prove that this was another of Froilan's tricks, and had the whole matter discussed by the Inquisition, who, however, could find nothing to connect him with it, but proceeded to excavate the spot indicated in the Calle de Silva, and there found sundry dolls and figures dressed in uniforms, which dolls were borne in solemn procession and burnt with all the ceremonies of the Church at the end of July. All this was of course conveyed to the King by Froilan, and it, together with the positive assurance that he was bewitched given to him by a German exorciser named Mauro Tenda, who had been secretly summoned to Spain, threw the poor creature into such an agony of terror that his state became more and more pitiable.

In September a mad woman in a state of frenzy presented herself at the palace and demanded audience. She was refused admittance, and thereupon began to scream and struggle in a way that attracted the attention of the King, who told his attendants to admit her. She burst in foaming and shrieking with a crucifix in her hand, cursing and blaspheming at the poor trembling King, and she had to be borne out again on the shoulders of the guards, the King nearly dying of fright on the spot. The maniac was followed, and it was found that she lived with two other demoniacs, one of whom was under the impression {315} that they were keeping the King subject in their room. This nonsense was also conveyed to the monarch, who was now thoroughly persuaded that he was under the influence of sorcery, and he ordered that all three of the women should be exorcised by the German monk. This was done, Froilan standing by and dictating the questions that were to be asked of the Devil by the exorciser. Unfortunately for the confessor, the questions he asked were rather leading ones, in which his desire to injure the Queen was evident. "Who was it," he asked, "that had caused the King's malady?" The answer given was that it was a beautiful woman. "Was it the Queen?" was next demanded, to which the reply was somewhat confusing, as it was merely the name of an unknown man, "Don Juan Palia." "Is he a relative of the Queen? What countryman is he?" received no reply; but when the Devil was asked in what form the charm had been administered he said, "In snuff." "Any of it left?" "Yes, in the desk." "What queen was it that caused the malady?" was again asked. "The dead one," said the Devil. "Is there any other charm?" "Yes." "Who gave it?" "Maria de la Presentacion." "Who ordered it?" "Don Antonio de la Paz." "When was it given?" No answer. "Of what was it made?" "Of a dog's bone." "Why did you send the woman to frighten the King?" No answer. Other questions and answers were given of the same sort, the latter mentioning at random the names of unknown people, and in some cases libelling the Queen and the ministers--all of it obviously the babble of a mad woman. Secret {316} though the exorcism was, the Queen had a full report of it, and was of course furious with rage at the open attempt to cast upon her the blame of the witchcraft.

The first step towards her revenge was to get a new Grand Inquisitor in her interest, and she pressed the King to appoint her friend Folch de Cardona. He refused, no doubt prompted by his confessor Froilan, and, notwithstanding the Queen's passionate protests, appointed a second son of one of the noblest houses in Spain, Cardinal Cordoba, to whom the King unburdened himself completely, and Froilan told the whole story of the exorcism from beginning to end. From these confabulations a most extraordinary resolution was arrived at. Probably the Queen herself was too high game to fly at, so the new Grand Inquisitor and his friends decided that the Devil and the Admiral of Castile, the late Prime Minister, were at the bottom of all the King's trouble, and they ordered the Admiral with his papers to be secretly seized and imprisoned by the Inquisition of Granada, whilst all his household were incarcerated in another prison. They had no doubt, they said, that he would confess all, even if his papers did not incriminate him. No action, however, could be taken until the new Grand Inquisitor's appointment was ratified by the Pope; but on the very day the bull of ratification arrived the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor died of poison, and the Queen once again urged her nominee for the place, but without success as before. She then cast about for an ambitious man who was unobjectionable to her opponents, but who might nevertheless be bought over by her. She found {317} him in the person of Mendoza, Bishop of Segovia, to whom she promised her support and a cardinal's hat if he would serve her. He was appointed Grand Inquisitor, and the Queen had now the whip-hand of her enemy, the confessor. First the German monk was netted, and under torture by the Inquisition made a clean breast of his exorcism in the Calle del Olmo, when Froilan was present. Then a monk of the Atocha, who had been sent by the Provincial to investigate the strange doings of Friar Argüelles at Cangas, produced the letters from the "friend and the master," and told the story of the conjurations. This was quite enough evidence to ruin Froilan, and he was apprehended. He refused to answer any questions, as all he had done had been by the King's own orders, and as the confessor of his Majesty his mouth was closed. He was at once dismissed from his offices, and the Grand Inquisitor appealed to the King to allow all privileges to be waived, and his confessor punished. Poor Charles the Bewitched was dying in good earnest now, and could only mumble out that they might do justice. But Froilan had powerful friends both at Court and in the Council of the Inquisition, and before the blow fell he retired, ostensibly to his monastery, but thence fled to the coast, and so to Rome. But he was not safe even there, for the Grand Inquisitor had him seized for heresy by the Papal officers and brought back to Spain. Then came the long struggle between the Inquisition and its head. First, Froilan's case was submitted to the theological committee of the Holy Office, who unanimously absolved him. On June 23, 1700, he was fully acquitted by the General Council of the {318} Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor alone voting for his secret imprisonment without further trial.

At the next meeting of the full Council, to the intense surprise of the members, a decree for the secret imprisonment of Froilan was placed before them for signature. They unanimously refused to sign it, and came to high words--almost blows--with their chief, who threatened them all with dire consequences for their obstinacy, and, to show that he was in earnest, there and then sent five of them down to their dungeons on his own responsibility. This was too high-handed even for the meekest of the Inquisitors, and the Council broke up in confusion. The Council of Castile, the supreme advisers of the Crown, appealed at once to the King against the imprisonment of the Inquisitors; but the King was helpless now, for the Queen and a new confessor were at his bedside, bound to stand by the Grand Inquisitor through thick and thin. They got the dying King to sign a decree appointing new Inquisitors enough to swamp the votes of those left, but lo and behold! they turned against their own creator at the very first meeting, and refused to endorse the Grand Inquisitor's action, either as to the imprisonment of Froilan or that of the Inquisitors. The strong man who led the revolt was Lorenzo Folch de Cardona, the brother of the Queen's old friend, now Bishop of Valencia, and it was decided that he must be silenced somehow. They offered him a bishopric, which he refused. They threatened him with prison and banishment, and he told them that they dared not touch him; and he was right, for all Madrid was looking on. Then the Inquisitor-General sent the case to be {319} judged by a provincial council of the Inquisition at Murcia, which was subservient to him, but the General Council at Madrid told them they would be acting illegally if they decided against the verdict already given by the Committee of Theologians and the General Council, and even they did not dare to find Froilan guilty. In the meanwhile, guilty or not guilty, the poor man was kept a close prisoner in a dark cell of a monastery of the Dominican Order, to which he belonged.

In November, 1700, the King died, and the Grand Inquisitor was one of the regents, making himself remarkable for his splendour and ostentation during the short period of uncertainty after the King's death. But the arrival of the French King, Philip V., put an end to the Queen's hopes, and the Grand Inquisitor was sent off in disgrace to his diocese. As soon as his back was turned the General Council of the Inquisition, with Folch de Cardona in the chair, demanded of Prior of the Atocha by what right he still kept Froilan in prison. His answer was that he did so on the warrant of the Grand Inquisitor. An appeal was made to the King, but the fortune of war kept Philip for ever on the move, and for years no decision was given. In the meanwhile the Pope espoused the cause of the Inquisitor-General, and protested against his deprivation. The King appointed a new Inquisitor-General, and the Pope vetoed the appointment. Then the Pope sent special power to the old Grand Inquisitor to sentence Froilan to whatever punishment he liked without more ado, and the Council of the Inquisition and Folch de Cardona protested to the King against the attempt of the Pope to override the {320} law of Spain; and at last Philip V. put his foot down once for all--dismissed the Inquisitor-General, reappointed the old Council, and authorised them to release Froilan in the King's name. They found him, after five years' close confinement, nearly blind in the dungeons of the monastery of the Atochu, and brought him out in triumph to be appointed Bishop of Avila. In vain the Pope protested and the dismissed Grand Inquisitor fumed. Philip the Magnanimous was a very different monarch from Charles the Bewitched. The black bigotry of the House of Austria was gone, and thenceforward, though the Holy Office existed in the land for a century longer, the arbitrary power of the Inquisition to override the law of the land was gone with it.

[1] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1893.

[2] Stanhope, the English minister in Madrid, writes to the Duke of Shrewsbury, September, 1696: "They cut off his hair in this sickness, which the decay of nature had almost done before, all his crown being bald. He has a ravenous stomach, and swallows all he eats whole, for his nether jaw stands out so much that his two rows of teeth cannot meet, so that a gizzard or a liver of a hen passes down whole, and his weak stomach not being able to digest it he void it in the same manner."

[3] "L'Histoire dans Ruy Blas" in "Études sur l'Espagne," by A. Morel-Fatio, Paris.

[4] Add. MS. 10241, British Museum. See also "Proceso criminal fulminado contra el Rmo. P.M. Fray Froylan Diax, de la sagrada religion de predicadores, Confesor del Rey N.S.D. Carlos II.: Madrid, 1787."

[5] Stanhope to his son, March 14, 1698: "Our Court is in great disorder: the grandees all dog and cat, Turk and Moor. The King is in a languishing condition, so weak and spent as to his principles of life that there is only hope of preserving him for a few weeks.... The general inclination is altogether French to the succession, their aversion to the Queen having set them against all her countrymen, and if the French King will content himself that one of his younger grandchildren be King of Spain, he will find no opposition either from grandees or common people. The King is not in a condition to give audience, speaking very little and that not much to the purpose. The terms in which they express it to me is that he is _embelecado_, _atolondrado_, _and dementado_. He fancies the devils are very busy in tempting him."

[6] "The King is so very weak he can scarcely lift his hand to his head to feed himself, and so extremely melancholy that neither his buffoons, dwarfs, nor puppet shows, all of which show their abilities before him, can in the least divert him from fancying everything that is said or done to be a temptation of the Devil, and never thinking himself safe with out his confessor and two friars by his side, whom he makes lie in his chamber every night" (Stanhope to the Earl of Portland. March 14, 1698).

[7] How fit the King was to undergo such a regime as this may be judged by Stanhope's letter to his son, dated Madrid, June 15, 1698: "Our gazettes here tells us every week that his Catholic Majesty is in perfect health, and it is the general answer to all inquiries. It is true that he is abroad every day but _hærct lateri lethalis arundo_; his ankles and knees swell again, his eyes bag, the lids red as scarlet, and the rest of his face a greenish yellow. His tongue is _trabada_, as they express it; that is, he has such a fumbling in his speech, those near him hardly understand him, at which he sometimes grows angry, asks if they all be deaf."

{321}

A SPRIG OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA.

{323}

_A SPRIG OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA._[1]

No dead and gone human visage looms so clearly through the mist of ages as that strange lymphatic face of Philip IV., which the genius of Velazquez delighted to portray from youth to age. The smooth-faced stripling in hunting dress, with his fair pink and white complexion, his lank yellow hair, and his great mumbling Austrian mouth, shows more plainly on canvas than he could have done whilst alive how weak of will and how potent of passion he was, how easily he would be led by the overbearing Count-Duke of Olivares to sacrifice all else for splendid shows and sensuous indulgence; how his vanity would be flattered by poets, painters, and players, whilst the world-wide empire of his fathers was crumbling to nothingness {324} beneath his sway, and his vassals were being robbed of their last maravedi to pay for the frenzy of waste and prodigality with which Charles Stuart was entertained or a royal wedding celebrated. Thenceforward, through his fastuous prime, stately and splendid in his black satin and gold, to the time when, old and disappointed, with forty years of disastrous domination, the rheumy eyes drawn and haggard, but the head still erect, haughty and unapproachable in its reserve, the great painter tells the King's story better than any pen could write it. There is something not unlovable in the shy, weak, poetic face, and one can pity the lad with such a countenance who found himself the greatest king on earth at the age of sixteen, surrounded by fawning flatterers and greedy bloodsuckers who plunged him into a vortex of dissipation before his father's body was cold in the marble sarcophagus at the Escurial. The old man's face, too, cold and repellent as it is, shocking as are the ravages that time and self-indulgence have stamped upon it, has yet in it an almost plaintive despair that explains those terrible broken-hearted letters in which the King, icy and undemonstrative as he was, poured out his agony and sorrow undisguised for years to the only person in the wide world he trusted, the nun Maria de Agreda.

His long reign, which saw the ruin of the Spanish power, witnessed also the most splendid epoch of Spanish art and literature, the golden age of the Spanish stage, and a wasteful prodigality of magnificence in the Court such as, with the exception of that displayed by Philip's son-in-law, the Roi-soleil, the world has never seen {325} equalled. The Elizabethan age in England may have approached it in literary strength, although even that cannot show such a galaxy as Lope de Vega, Calderon, Velazquez, Murillo, Tirso de Molina, Moreto, Quevedo, Guevara, Montalvan, and their host of imitators. The history of the reign has never yet been adequately or even fairly written. Isolated portions and detached incidents or personalities have been dealt with, and stray fragments now and again bring vivid pictures of the sumptuous Court before us. Spanish writers, of late years particularly, are fond of dwelling with microscopic minuteness on the incidents and adventures of the time that happened at particular spots in the capital; but the topographical-historical style, first introduced by Mesonero Romanes, and now so popular, pleasant reading as it is, does not attempt to do more than amuse by presenting romantic and detached pictures of a bygone age, and all that can be claimed by the writers is that materials are gradually being collected and brought to light by them from contemporary sources which will be invaluable to the future serious historian of the reign.

The British Museum contains many hundreds of unpublished manuscripts bearing upon the subject--copies of official documents, letters, and "relations" from Philip's Court, petitions and statements of grievance addressed to the King, and vast collections of miscellaneous papers in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, most of which have not yet been consulted for historical purposes. Amongst a great mass of rather dry official documents of the period, most of them copies, I recently {326} came across a small, compact group of papers, all originals, telling a curious, plaintive little story, nakedly enough, it is true, but not without a pathos of its own. There is nothing historically important in it, or in the fact that it discloses probably for the first time since it happened, but a quaint side-light is thrown by some of the documents on the way in which Court intrigue was conducted, and also, curiously enough, on the opinion of the highest authorities of those times as to the best way of bringing up a child, by which it will be seen that, allowing for difference of climate and national habits, no great change has taken place in this respect in the two centuries and a half that have passed since the papers were penned.

Philip had succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in March, 1621. He was only sixteen, and Olivares at once plunged him into such distractions as the then most dissolute capital in Europe could afford. By a strange coincidence the paper in the Museum (Egerton MSS., 329) which precedes the group of which I wish to speak is a lengthy and solemn letter, dated only a few weeks after the young King's accession, addressed to the Count-Duke by the Archbishop of Granada, remonstrating with the all-powerful favourite for taking the boy-king out in the street at night. "People," he says, "are gossiping about it all over Madrid, and things are being said which add little to the sovereign's credit or dignity." Madrid even now is fond of scandal, but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, isolated from the world as was the capital of the Spains, its one absorbing pursuit from morn till night was tittle-tattle, and the long {327} raised walk by the side wall of the church of St. Philip, fronting the Onate palace in the Calle Mayor, was a recognised exchange for the scandal-mongers. The Archbishop says, in his bold and outspoken letter, that not only have these people begun to whisper things that were better unsaid, but the example shown by the King and his minister in scouring the streets in search of adventure is a bad one for the people at large, and he reminds Olivares of the anxiety of the late King on this very account, and his dread that his heir was already before his death being inducted into dissipation. The answer to the bold prelate's remonstrance is just such as might be expected from the insolent favourite. He tells him in effect that he is an impertinent meddler, and ought to be ashamed, with his rank, and at his age, to trouble him with the vulgar gossip of the street. The King, he tells him, is sixteen and he (Olivares) is thirty-four, and it is not to be expected that they are to be kept in darkness as to what is done in the world. It is good that the King should see all phases of life, bad as well as good. He (Olivares) never trusts the King with any one else; and the favourite finishes his answer by a scarcely veiled threat that if the Archbishop does not mind his own business worse may befall him. No doubt the prelate took the warning, for Olivares was not scrupulous, and had a short and secret way with those who incurred his displeasure.