any food, and then ate so many patties of minced meat that he nearly died of indigestion.  He was also said to have attempted to choke himself with a diamond, and to have been prevented by his guard; to have filled his bed with ice; to have sat in cold draughts; to have gone eleven days without food, the last method being, as one would think, sufficiently thorough.  Philip, therefore, seeing his son thus desperate, consulted once more with the Holy Office, and came to the decision that it was better to condemn him legitimately to death than to permit him to die by his own hand.  In order, however, to save appearances, the order was secretly carried into execution.  Don Carlos was made to swallow poison in a bowl of broth, of which he died in a few hours.  This was at the commencement of his twenty-third year.  The death was concealed for several months, and was not made public till after Alva’s victory at Jemmingen.

Such was the account drawn up by de Thou from the oral communications of de Foix, and from other sources not indicated.  Certainly, such a narrative is far from being entitled to implicit credence.  The historian was a contemporary, but he was not in Spain, and the engineer’s testimony is, of course, not entitled to much consideration on the subject of the process and the execution (if there were an execution); although conclusive as to matters which had been within his personal knowledge.  For the rest, all that it can be said to establish is the existence of the general rumor, that Carlos came to his death by foul means and in consequence of advice given by the inquisition.

On the other hand, in all the letters written at the period by persons in Madrid most likely, from their position, to know the truth, not a syllable has been found in confirmation of the violent death said to have been suffered by Carlos.  Secretary Erasso, the papal nuncio Castagna, the Venetian envoy Cavalli, all express a conviction that the death of the prince had been brought about by his own extravagant conduct and mental excitement; by alternations of starving and voracious eating, by throwing himself into the fire; by icing his bed, and by similar acts of desperation.  Nearly every writer alludes to the incident of the refusal of the priest to admit Carlos to communion, upon the ground of his confessed deadly hatred to an individual whom all supposed to be the King.  It was also universally believed that Carlos meant to kill his father.  The nuncio asked Spinosa (then president of Castile) if this report were true.  “If nothing more were to be feared,” answered the priest, “the King would protect himself by other measures,” but the matter was worse, if worse could be.  The King, however, summoned all the foreign diplomatic body and assured them that the story was false.  After his arrest, the Prince, according to Castagna, attempted various means of suicide, abstaining, at last, many days from food, and dying in consequence, “discoursing, upon his deathbed, gravely and like a man of sense.”