son of the Dauphin; and, he failing, to the Archduke Charles; with
the reservation, as regarded the two first, that they should not unite
in their own persons the sovereignties of France and Spain; and in that
of the third that he should renounce all claim to the empire of Germany
if he ever became heir to the Spanish throne; while it was, moreover,
finally decreed that, if by any extraordinary concatenation of events,
neither of those three princes should be enabled to claim the bequest of
Charles II., it should devolve upon the Duke of Savoy without any
restriction whatever.

The precaution was well-timed; for shortly afterwards, Charles, losing
the use of his faculties, descended into the vaults of the Escurial,
where he had commanded the tombs of his father, mother, and first wife
to be opened in order that he might consult their tenants upon the
sacred obligations of the will he had just signed. Wildly interrogating
the mouldering relics, upon which he imprinted impassioned kisses, the
unfortunate monarch fell senseless upon an adjacent tomb, destined
shortly to receive his own remains, and was carried from those gloomy
sepulchres back to his couch only to be borne back again in a few short
days a corpse.

The royal will--the subject of so much gloomy meditation, of discussions
the most anxious in the councils of the Escurial, and of intrigues the
most active on the part of the foreigner, had been accepted by Louis
XIV. in the name of his grandson, the Duke d'Anjou. The cabinet of
Versailles, hoping to ally the Duke of Savoy to its policy, had brought
about a marriage between Philip V. and the daughter of Victor Amadeus
II., Marie Louise, sister of the young Duchess of Burgundy. The House of
Hapsburg, during a period of almost hopeless anarchy, had exhausted its
efforts in the attempt to establish a political duality in Spain. "If
the government of that monarchy be closely scrutinised," wrote Count de
Rebenac,[14] "it will be found that disorder everywhere prevails to an
excessive degree; but that, in the condition in which matters stand,
scarcely any change can be ventured upon without risk of incurring
dangers more to be dreaded than the existing evils, and a complete
revolution would be necessary before perfect order in the state could be
re-established." Rebenac added that it was not the elements of strength
that were wanting to Spain, but that they were scattered as in a chaos,
and that no master-mind existe