hich a monarch retired from business passes his time
cannot be devoid of interest. He by no means gave up his attention to the
affairs of the realm, but kept himself well informed in all that was going
on, sometimes much to his annoyance, since blunders were made that gave
him a passing desire to be again at the head of affairs. In truth, two
years after his retirement, the public concerns got into such a snarl that
Philip earnestly sought to induce the emperor to leave his retreat and aid
him with his ripened experience. This Charles utterly refused to do. He
had had his fill of politics. It was much less trouble to run a household
than a nation. But he undertook to do what he could to improve the
revenues of the crown. Despatches about public affairs were brought to him
constantly, and his mental thermometer went up or down as things prospered
or the reverse. But he was not to be tempted to plunge again into the
turbulent tide of public affairs.

Charles had other and more humble duties to occupy his time. His paroxysms
of gout came only at intervals, and in the periods between he kept himself
engaged. He had a taste for mechanics, and among his attendants was an
Italian named Torriano, a man of much ingenuity, who afterwards
constructed the celebrated hydraulic works at Toledo. He was a skilful
clock-maker, and, as Charles took a special interest in timepieces, his
assistant furnished his apartments with a series of elaborate clocks. One
of these was so complicated that its construction occupied more than three
years, every detail of the work being curiously watched by Charles.
Watches were then of recent invention, yet there were a number of them at
Yuste, made by Torriano.

The attempt to make his clocks keep time together is said to have been one
of the daily occupations of the retired emperor, and the adjustment of his
clocks and watches gave him so much trouble that he is said to have one
day remarked that it was absurd to try and make men think alike, when, do
what he would, he could not make two of his timepieces agree.

He often amused himself with Torriano in making little puppets,--soldiers
that would go through their exercises, dancing tambourine-girls, etc. It
is even asserted that they constructed birds that would fly in and out of
the window, a story rather difficult to accept. The monks began to look
upon Torriano as a professor of magic when he invented a handmill small
enough to be hidden in a friar