As the days wore on he felt himself steadily sinking, and asked to receive extreme unction.  As he had never seen that rite performed he chose to rehearse it beforehand, and told Ruys Velasco; who was in constant attendance upon him, to go for minute instructions on the subject to the Archbishop of Toledo.  The sacrament having been duly. administered; the king subsequently, on the 1st September, desired to receive it once more.  The archbishop, fearing that the dying monarch’s strength would be insufficient for the repetition of the function, informed him that the regulations of the Church required in such cases only a compliance with certain trifling forms, as the ceremony had been already once thoroughly carried out.  But the king expressed himself as quite determined that the sacrament should be repeated in all its parts; that he should once more—­be anointed—­to use the phrase of brother Francis Neyen—­with the oil which holy athletes require in their wrestle with death.

This was accordingly done in the presence of his son and daughter, and, of his chief secretaries, Christopher de Moura and John de Idiaquez, besides the Counts Chinchon, Fuensalido, and several other conspicuous personages.  He was especially desirous that his son should be present, in order that; when he too should come to die, he might not find himself, like his father, in ignorance of the manner in which this last sacrament was to be performed.

When it was finished he described himself as infinitely consoled, and as having derived even more happiness from the rite than he had dared to anticipate.

Thenceforth he protested that he would talk no more of the world’s affairs.  He had finished with all things below, and for the days or hours still remaining to him he would keep his heart exclusively fixed upon Heaven.  Day by day as he lay on his couch of unutterable and almost unexampled misery, his confessors and others read to him from religious works, while with perfect gentleness he would insist that one reader should relieve another, that none might be fatigued.

On the 11th September he dictated these words to Christopher de Moura, who was to take them to Diego de Yepes, the confessor:—­

“Father Confessor, you are in the place of God, and I protest thus before His presence that I will do all that you declare necessary for my salvation.  Thus upon you will be the, responsibility for my omissions, because I am ready to do all.”

Finding that the last hour was approaching, he informed Don Fernando de Toledo where:  he could find some candles of our lady of Montserrat, one of which he desered to keep in his hand at the supreme moment.  He also directed Ruys de Velasco to take from a special shrine—­which he had indicated to him six years before—­a crucifix which the emperor his father had held upon his death-bed.  All this was accomplished according to his wish.

He had already made arrangements for his funeral procession, and had subsequently provided all the details of his agony.  It was now necessary to give orders as to the particulars of his burial.