from the eye of the dying Henry II.

He was now married to a lady of rank from Brussels, Anne van Hamme by
name; and their daughter married in time Philip II.'s grand falconer, who
was doubtless a personage of no small social rank. Vesalius was well off
in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of
luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some
shock should awake him from his lethargy.

And the awakening shock did come. After eight years of court life, he
resolved, early in the year 1564, to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The reasons for so strange a determination are wrapped in mystery and
contradiction. The common story was that he had opened a corpse to
ascertain the cause of death, and that, to the horror of the bystanders,
the heart was still seen to beat; that his enemies accused him to the
Inquisition, and that he was condemned to death, a sentence which was
commuted to that of going on pilgrimage. But here, at the very outset,
accounts differ. One says that the victim was a nobleman, name not
given; another that it was a lady's maid, name not given. It is most
improbable, if not impossible, that Vesalius, of all men, should have
mistaken a living body for a dead one; while it is most probable, on the
other hand, that his medical enemies would gladly raise such a calumny
against him, when he was no longer in Spain to contradict it. Meanwhile
Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, makes no mention of Vesalius
having been brought before its tribunal, while he does mention Vesalius's
residence at Madrid. Another story is, that he went abroad to escape the
bad temper of his wife; another that he wanted to enrich himself. Another
story--and that not an unlikely one--is, that he was jealous of the
rising reputation of his pupil Fallopius, then professor of anatomy at
Venice. This distinguished surgeon, as I said before, had written a
book, in which he added to Vesalius's discoveries, and corrected certain
of his errors. Vesalius had answered him hastily and angrily, quoting
his anatomy from memory; for, as he himself complained, he could not in
Spain obtain a subject for dissection; not even, he said, a single skull.
He had sent his book to Venice to be published, and had heard, seemingly,
nothing of it. He may have felt that he was falling behind in the race
of science, and that