abhorrence.  “I could not live among these people,” she wrote to the Emperor, but a few weeks before the abdication, “even as a private person, for it would be impossible for me to do my duty towards God and my prince.  As to governing them, I take God to witness that the task is so abhorrent to me, that I would rather earn my daily bread by labor than attempt it.”  She added, that a woman of fifty years of age, who had served during twenty-five of them, had a right to repose, and that she was moreover “too old to recommence and learn her A, B, C.”  The Emperor, who had always respected her for the fidelity with which she had carried out his designs, knew that it was hopeless to oppose her retreat.  As for Philip, he hated his aunt, and she hated him--although, both at the epoch of the abdication and subsequently, he was desirous that she should administer the government.

The new Regent was to be the Duke of Savoy.  This wandering and adventurous potentate had attached himself to Philip’s fortunes, and had been received by the King with as much favor as he had ever enjoyed at the hands of the Emperor.  Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, then about twenty-six or seven years of age, was the son of the late unfortunate duke, by Donna Beatrice of Portugal, sister of the Empress.  He was the nephew of Charles, and first cousin to Philip.  The partiality of the Emperor for his mother was well known, but the fidelity with which the family had followed the imperial cause had been productive of nothing but disaster to the duke.  He had been ruined in fortune, stripped of all his dignities and possessions.  His son’s only inheritance was his sword.  The young Prince of Piedmont, as he was commonly called in his youth; sought the camp of the Emperor, and was received with distinguished favor.  He rose rapidly in the military service.  Acting always upon his favorite motto, “Spoliatis arma supersunt,” he had determined, if possible, to carve his way to glory, to wealth, and even to his hereditary estates, by his sword alone.  War was not only his passion, but his trade.  Every one of his campaigns was a speculation, and he had long derived a satisfactory income by purchasing distinguished prisoners of war at a low price from the soldiers who had captured them, and were ignorant of their rank, and by ransoming them afterwards at an immense advance.  This sort of traffic in men was frequent in that age, and was considered perfectly honorable.  Marshal Strozzi, Count Mansfeld, and other professional soldiers, derived their main income from the system.  They were naturally inclined, therefore, to look impatiently upon a state of peace as an unnatural condition of affairs which cut off all the profits of their particular branch of industry, and condemned them both to idleness and poverty.  The Duke of Savoy had become one of the most experienced and successful commanders of the age, and an especial favorite with the Emperor.  He had served with Alva in the campaigns against