and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted.” [Cabrera] The same wholesale admirer adds, that “his aspect was so reverend, that rustics who met him alone in a wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive veneration.”  In face, he was the living image of his father, having the same broad forehead, and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better proportioned, nose.  In the lower part of the countenance, the remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced.  He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw.  His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed.  He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard.  His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral.  He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner.  This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry. [Bodavaro]

Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive into his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn.

The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed triangularly under the canopy, such of the audience as had seats provided for them, now took their places, and the proceedings commenced.  Philibert de Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of the Netherlands, arose at the emperor’s command, and made a long oration.  He spoke of the emperor’s warm affection for the provinces, as the land of his birth; of his deep regret that his broken health and failing powers, both of body and mind, compelled him to resign his sovereignty, and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more genial climate.  Caesar’s gout was then depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as he sat there and listened to the councillor’s eloquence. “’Tis a most truculent executioner,” said Philibert:  “it invades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched.  It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses not until, having exhausted and debilitated the whole body, it has rendered all its necessary instruments useless, and conquered the mind by immense torture.” [Godelaevus]