permit her to marry the
husband of her sister."

This monarch, however, had no such scruples. Incest appears to have had
in his eyes peculiar charms; for he offered himself three times to three
different sisters-in-law. He seems also to have known the secret of
getting quit of his wives when they became inconvenient. In state
matters he spared no one whom he feared; to them he sacrificed his only
son, his brother, and a great number of princes and ministers.

It is said of Philip, that before he died he advised his son to make
peace with England, and war with the other powers. _Pacem cum Anglo,
bellum cum reliquis_. Queen Elizabeth, and the ruin of his invincible
fleet, physicked his frenzy into health, and taught him to fear and
respect that country which he thought he could have made a province of
Spain.

On his death-bed he did everything he could for _salvation_. The
following protestation, a curious morsel of bigotry, he sent to his
confessor a few days before he died:--

"Father confessor! as you occupy the place of God, I protest to you that
I will do everything you shall say to be necessary for my being saved;
so that what I omit doing will be placed to your account, as I am ready
to acquit myself of all that shall be ordered to me."

Is there, in the records of history, a more glaring instance of the idea
which a good Catholic attaches to the power of a confessor, than the
present authentic example? The most licentious philosophy seems not more
dangerous than a religion whose votary believes that the accumulation of
crimes can be dissipated by the breath of a few orisons, and which,
considering a venal priest to "occupy the place of God," can traffic
with the divine power at a very moderate price.

After his death a Spanish grandee wrote with a coal on the
chimney-piece of his chamber the following epitaph, which ingeniously
paints his character in four verses:--

Siendo moco luxurioso;
Siendo hombre, fue cruel;
Siendo viejo, codicioso:
Que se puede esperar del?

In youth he was luxurious;
In manhood he was cruel;
In old age he was avaricious:
What could be hoped from him?

END OF VOL. I.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of
3), by Isaac D'Israeli

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE ***

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