The details of the fearful disorder may have attraction for the pathologist, but have no especial interest for the general reader.  Let it suffice, that no torture ever invented by Torquemada or Peter Titelman to serve the vengeance of Philip and his ancestors or the pope against the heretics of Italy or Flanders, could exceed in acuteness the agonies which the most Catholic king was now called upon to endure.  And not one of the long line of martyrs, who by decree of Charles or Philip had been strangled, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, ever faced a death of lingering torments with more perfect fortitude, or was sustained by more ecstatic visions of heavenly mercy, than was now the case with the great monarch of Spain.

That the grave-worms should do their office before soul and body were parted, was a torment such as the imagination of Dante might have invented for the lowest depths of his “Inferno.”

[A great English poet has indeed expressed the horrible thought:—­

                   “It is as if the dead could feel
                    The icy worm about them steal:”—­Byron.]

On the 22nd July, the king asked Dr. Mercado if his sickness was likely to have a fatal termination.  The physician, not having the courage at once to give the only possible reply, found means to evade the question.  On the 1st August his Majesty’s confessor, father Diego de Yepes, after consultation with Mercado, announced to Philip that the only issue to his malady was death.  Already he had been lying for ten days on his back, a mass of sores and corruption, scarcely able to move, and requiring four men to turn him in his bed.

He expressed the greatest satisfaction at the sincerity which had now been used, and in the gentlest and most benignant manner signified his thanks to them for thus removing all doubts from his mind, and for giving him information which it was of so much importance for his eternal welfare to possess.

His first thought was to request the papal nuncio, Gaetano, to despatch a special courier to Rome to request the pope’s benediction.  This was done, and it was destined that the blessing of his Holiness should arrive in time.

He next prepared himself to make a general confession, which lasted three days, father Diego having drawn up at his request a full and searching interrogatory.  The confession may have been made the more simple, however, by the statement which he made to the priest, and subsequently repeated to the Infante his son, that in all his life he had never consciously done wrong to any one.  If he had ever committed an act of injustice, it was unwittingly, or because he had been deceived in the circumstances.  This internal conviction of general righteousness was of great advantage to him in the midst of his terrible sufferings, and accounted in great degree for the gentleness, thoughtfulness for others, and perfect benignity, which, according to the unanimous testimony of many witnesses, characterised his conduct during this whole sickness.