The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555 | Page 4

both majestic
and benignant. His nose was aquiline but crooked. The lower part of his
face was famous for its deformity. The under lip, a Burgundian
inheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, was
heavy and hanging; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper,

that it was impossible for him to bring together the few fragments of
teeth which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an
intelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he was
always much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous, in
consequence of this original defect, which now seemed hardly human,
but rather an original deformity.
So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small,
meagre man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow
chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. He seemed so
little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary,
accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he
was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the
tournament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. "His
body," says his professed panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which,
however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the
immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted." [Cabrera] The
same wholesale admirer adds, that "his aspect was so reverend, that
rustics who met him alone in a wood, without knowing him, bowed
down with instinctive veneration." In face, he was the living image of
his father, having the same broad forehead, and blue eye, with the same
aquiline, but better proportioned, nose. In the lower part of the
countenance, the remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise
reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth,
and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his
hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the
aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in
public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the
ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and
even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural
haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and
partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate
fondness for pastry. [Bodavaro]
Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive
into his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose single will
was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then
present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of
the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn.

The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed triangularly
under the canopy, such of the audience as had seats provided for them,
now took their places, and the proceedings commenced. Philibert de
Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of the Netherlands, arose at
the emperor's command, and made a long oration. He spoke of the
emperor's warm affection for the provinces, as the land of his birth; of
his deep regret that his broken health and failing powers, both of body
and mind, compelled him to resign his sovereignty, and to seek relief
for his shattered frame in a more genial climate. Caesar's gout was then
depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as
he sat there and listened to the councillor's eloquence. "'Tis a most
truculent executioner," said Philibert: "it invades the whole body, from
the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing
untouched. It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the
bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the
joints into chalk, it pauses not until, having exhausted and debilitated
the whole body, it has rendered all its necessary instruments useless,
and conquered the mind by immense torture." [Godelaevus]
[The historian was present at the ceremony, and gives a very full report
of the speeches, all of which he heard. His imagination may have
assisted his memory in the task. The other reporters of the councillor's
harangue have reduced this pathological flight of rhetoric to a very
small compass.]
Engaged in mortal struggle with such an enemy, Caesar felt himself
obliged, as the councillor proceeded to inform his audience, to change
the scene of the contest from the humid air of Flanders to the warmer
atmosphere of Spain. He rejoiced, however, that his son was both
vigorous and experienced, and that his recent marriage with the Queen
of England had furnished the provinces with a most valuable alliance.
He then again referred to the emperor's boundless love for his subjects,
and concluded with a tremendous, but superfluous, exhortation to
Philip on