He Lay There Like A Leper Smitten By The Hand Of The
God He Had So Zealously Served.
Even in his mind there was no peace.
He
held in his clenched hand his father's crucifix, which Charles had held
in his exultant death at Yuste. Yet in his waking hours he was never
free from the horrible suggestion that he had not done enough for
salvation. He would start in horror from a sleep that was peopled with
shapes from torment. Humanity was avenged at last.
So powerful is the influence of a great personality that in the Escorial
you can think of no one but Philip II. He lived here only fourteen
years, but every corridor and cloister seems to preserve the souvenir of
his sombre and imperious genius. For two and a half centuries his feeble
successors have trod these granite halls; but they flit through your
mind pale and unsubstantial as dreams. The only tradition they preserved
of their great descent was their magnificence and their bigotry. There
has never been one utterance of liberty or free thought inspired by this
haunted ground. The king has always been absolute here, and the monk has
been the conscience-keeper of the king. The whole life of the Escorial
has been unwholesomely pervaded by a flavor of holy water and burial
vaults. There was enough of the repressive influence of that savage
Spanish piety to spoil the freshness and vigor of a natural life, but
not enough to lead the court and the courtiers to a moral walk and
conversation.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 203 of 254
Words from 54070 to 54330
of 67759
