who were to effect that which medical skill seemed not to have effected.  Philip sent into the prince’s chamber several of the precious relics which he usually carried about with him.  The miraculous image of the Virgin of Atocha, in embroidering garments for whom, Spanish royalty, male and female, has spent so many an hour ere now, was brought in solemn procession and placed on an altar at the foot of the prince’s bed; and in the afternoon there entered, with a procession likewise, a shrine containing the bones of a holy anchorite, one Fray Diego, “whose life and miracles,” says Olivarez, “are so notorious:”  and the bones of St. Justus and St. Pastor, the tutelar saints of the university of Alcala.  Amid solemn litanies the relics of Fray Diego were laid upon the prince’s pillow, and the sudarium, or mortuary cloth, which had covered his face, was placed upon the prince’s forehead.

Modern science might object that the presence of so many personages, however pious or well intentioned, in a sick chamber on a hot Spanish May day, especially as the bath had been, for some generations past, held in religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish and Mussulman tendencies, might have somewhat interfered with the chances of the poor boy’s recovery.  Nevertheless the event seems to have satisfied Philip’s highest hopes; for that same night (so Don Carlos afterwards related) the holy monk Diego appeared to him in a vision, wearing the habit of St. Francis, and bearing in his hand a cross of reeds tied with a green band.  The prince stated that he first took the apparition to be that of the blessed St. Francis; but not seeing the stigmata, he exclaimed, “How?  Dost thou not bear the marks of the wounds?” What he replied Don Carlos did not recollect; save that he consoled him, and told him that he should not die of that malady.

Philip had returned to Madrid, and shut himself up in grief in the great Jeronymite monastery.  Elizabeth was praying for her step-son before the miraculous images of the same city.  During the night of the 9th of May prayers went up for Don Carlos in all the churches of Toledo, Alcala, and Madrid.  Alva stood all that night at the bed’s foot.  Don Garcia de Toledo sat in the arm-chair, where he had now sat night and day for more than a fortnight.  The good preceptor, Honorato Juan, afterwards Bishop of Osma, wrestled in prayer for the lad the whole night through.  His prayer was answered:  probably it had been answered already, without his being aware of it.  Be that as it may, about dawn Don Carlos’s heavy breathing ceased; he fell into a quiet sleep; and when he awoke all perceived at once that he was saved.