had neither the taste nor talents which make a man great in retirement.  Not a lofty thought, not a generous sentiment, not a profound or acute suggestion in his retreat has been recorded from his lips.  The epigrams which had been invented for him by fabulists have been all taken away, and nothing has been substituted, save a few dull jests exchanged with stupid friars.  So far from having entertained and even expressed that sentiment of religious toleration for which he was said to have been condemned as a heretic by the inquisition, and for which Philip was ridiculously reported to have ordered his father’s body to be burned, and his ashes scattered to the winds, he became in retreat the bigot effectually, which during his reign he had only been conventionally.  Bitter regrets that he should have kept his word to Luther, as if he had not broken faith enough to reflect upon in his retirement; stern self-reproach for omitting to put to death, while he had him in his power, the man who had caused all the mischief of the age; fierce instructions thundered from his retreat to the inquisitors to hasten the execution of all heretics, including particularly his ancient friends, preachers and almoners, Cazalla and Constantine de Fuente; furious exhortations to Philip—­as if Philip needed a prompter in such a work—­that he should set himself to “cutting out the root of heresy with rigor and rude chastisement;”—­such explosions of savage bigotry as these, alternating with exhibitions of revolting gluttony, with surfeits of sardine omelettes, Estramadura sausages, eel pies, pickled partridges, fat capons, quince syrups, iced beer, and flagons of Rhenish, relieved by copious draughts of senna and rhubarb, to which his horror-stricken doctor doomed him as he ate—­compose a spectacle less attractive to the imagination than the ancient portrait of the cloistered Charles.  Unfortunately it is the one which was painted from life.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive (100,000)
Despot by birth and inclination (Charles V.)
Endure every hardship but hunger
Gallant and ill-fated Lamoral Egmont
He knew men, especially he knew their weaknesses
His imagination may have assisted his memory in the task
Little grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast
Often much tyranny in democracy
Planted the inquisition in the Netherlands

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