own martial genius together with his name.  Carlos took much interest in his grandfather’s account of his various battles, but when the flight from Innspruck was narrated, he repeated many times, with much vehemence, that he never would have fled; to which position he adhered, notwithstanding all the arguments of the Emperor, and very much to his amusement.  The young Prince was always fond of soldiers, and listened eagerly to discourses of war.  He was in the habit also of recording the names of any military persons who, according to custom, frequently made offers of their services to the heir apparent, and of causing them to take a solemn oath to keep their engagements.  No other indications of warlike talent, however, have been preserved concerning him.  “He was crafty, ambitious, cruel, violent,” says the envoy Suriano, “a hater of buffoons, a lover of soldiers.”  His natural cruelty seems to have been remarkable from his boyhood.  After his return from the chase, he was in the habit of cutting the throats of hares and other animals, and of amusing himself with their dying convulsions.  He also frequently took pleasure in roasting them alive.  He once received a present of a very large snake from some person who seemed to understand how to please this remarkable young prince.  After a time, however, the favorite reptile allowed itself to bite its master’s finger, whereupon Don Carlos immediately retaliated by biting off its head.

He was excessively angry at the suggestion that the prince who was expected to spring from his father’s marriage with the English queen, would one day reign over the Netherlands, and swore he would challenge him to mortal combat in order to prevent such an infringement of his rights.  His father and grandfather were both highly diverted with this manifestation of spirit, but it was not decreed that the world should witness the execution of these fraternal intentions against the babe which was never to be born.

Ferocity, in short, seems to have been the leading characteristic of the unhappy Carlos.  His preceptor, a man of learning and merit, who was called “the honorable John”, tried to mitigate this excessive ardor of temperament by a course of Cicero de Officiis, which he read to him daily.  Neither the eloquence of Tully, however, nor the precepts of the honorable John made the least impression upon this very savage nature.  As he grew older he did not grow wiser nor more gentle.  He was prematurely and grossly licentious.  All the money which as a boy, he was allowed, he spent upon women of low character, and when he was penniless, he gave them his chains, his medals, even the clothes from his back.  He took pleasure in affronting respectable females when he met them in the streets, insulting them by the coarsest language and gestures.  Being cruel, cunning, fierce and licentious, he seemed to combine many of the worst qualities of a lunatic.  That he probably was one is the best defence which can be offered for his conduct.  In attempting to offer violence to a female, while he was at the university of Alcala, he fell down a stone staircase, from which cause he was laid up for a long time with a severely wounded head, and was supposed to have injured his brain.