“Having no children,” he observed, “and being obliged to appoint an heir to the Spanish crown from a foreign family, we find such great obscurity in the law of succession, that we are unable to form a settled determination.  Strict justice is our aim; and, to be able to decide with that justice, we have offered up constant prayers to God.  We are anxious to act rightly, and we have recourse to your holiness, as to an infallible guide, intreating you to consult with the cardinals and divines, and, after having attentively examined the testaments of our ancestors, to decide according to the rules of right and equity.”

Pope Innocent XII. was already prepared for this appeal, and was engaged to act as the agent of the French court.  The hoary-headed pontiff, with one foot in the grave, affected the character of great honesty and impartiality.  He required forty days to examine the important case, and to seek divine assistance.  He then returned the following answer, admirably adapted to influence a weak and superstitious prince: 

“Being myself,” he wrote, “in a situation similar to that of his Catholic majesty, the King of Spain, on the point of appearing at the judgment-seat of Christ, and rendering an account to the sovereign pastor of the flock which has been intrusted to my care, I am bound to give such advice as will not reproach my conscience on the day of judgment.  Your majesty ought not to put the interests of the house of Austria in competition with those of eternity.  Neither should you be ignorant that the French claimants are the rightful heirs of the crown, and no member of the Austrian family has the smallest legitimate pretension.  It is therefore your duty to omit no precaution, which your wisdom can suggest, to render justice where justice is due, and to secure, by every means in your power, the undivided succession of the Spanish monarchy to the French claimants.”

Charles, as fickle as the wind, still remained undecided, and his anxieties preying upon his feeble frame, already exhausted by disease, caused him rapidly to decline.  He was now confined to his chamber and his bed, and his death was hourly expected.  He hated the French, and all his sympathies were with Austria.  Some priests entered his chamber, professedly to perform the pompous and sepulchral service of the church of Rome for the dying.  In this hour of languor, and in the prospect of immediate death, they assailed the imbecile monarch with all the terrors of superstition.  They depicted the responsibility which he would incur should he entail on the kingdom the woes of a disputed succession; they assured him that he could not, without unpardonable guilt, reject the decision of the holy father of the Church; and growing more eager and excited, they denounced upon him the vengeance of Almighty God, if he did not bequeath the crown, now falling from his brow, to the Bourbons of France.