t seems, to attribute his recovery to a very different
source from that of a German knife. For on the morning of the 9th, when
the Moor was gone, and Don Carlos lay seemingly lifeless, there descended
into his chamber a _Deus e machina_, or rather a whole pantheon of
greater or lesser deities, who were to effect that which medical skill
seemed not to have effected. Philip sent into the prince's chamber
several of the precious relics which he usually carried about with him.
The miraculous image of the Virgin of Atocha, in embroidering garments
for whom, Spanish royalty, male and female, has spent so many an hour ere
now, was brought in solemn procession and placed on an altar at the foot
of the prince's bed; and in the afternoon there entered, with a
procession likewise, a shrine containing the bones of a holy anchorite,
one Fray Diego, "whose life and miracles," says Olivarez, "are so
notorious:" and the bones of St. Justus and St. Pastor, the tutelar
saints of the university of Alcala. Amid solemn litanies the relics of
Fray Diego were laid upon the prince's pillow, and the sudarium, or
mortuary cloth, which had covered his face, was placed upon the prince's
forehead.

Modern science might object that the presence of so many personages,
however pious or well intentioned, in a sick chamber on a hot Spanish May
day, especially as the bath had been, for some generations past, held in
religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish and Mussulman
tendencies, might have somewhat interfered with the chances of the poor
boy's recovery. Nevertheless the event seems to have satisfied Philip's
highest hopes; for that same night (so Don Carlos afterwards related) the
holy monk Diego appeared to him in a vision, wearing the habit of St.
Francis, and bearing in his hand a cross of reeds tied with a green band.
The prince stated that he first took the apparition to be that of the
blessed St. Francis; but not seeing the stigmata, he exclaimed, "How?
Dost thou not bear the marks of the wounds?" What he replied Don Carlos
did not recollect; save that he consoled him, and told him that he should
not die of that malady.

Philip had returned to Madrid, and shut himself up in grief in the great
Jeronymite monastery. Elizabeth was praying for her step-son before the
miraculous images of the same city. During the night of the 9th of May
prayers went up for Don Carlos in all the churches of Toledo, Alcala, and
Madrid. Alva sto