econd. The thread is but
slender which connects the unhappy young prince with the fortunes of the
northern republic. He was said, no doubt with truth, to desire the
government of Flanders. He was also supposed to be in secret
correspondence with the leaders of the revolt in the provinces. He
appeared, however, to possess very little of their confidence. His name
is only once mentioned by William of Orange, who said in a letter that
"the Prince of Spain had lately eaten sixteen pounds of fruit, including
four pounds of grapes at a single sitting, and had become ill in
consequence." The result was sufficiently natural, but it nowhere appears
that the royal youth, born to consume the fruits of the earth so largely,
had ever given the Netherlanders any other proof of his capacity to
govern them. There is no doubt that he was a most uncomfortable personage
at home, both to himself and to others, and that he hated his father'
very cordially. He was extremely incensed at the nomination of Alva to
the Netherlands, because he had hoped that either the King would go
thither or entrust the mission to him, in either of which events he
should be rid for a time of the paternal authority, or at least of the
paternal presence. It seems to be well ascertained that Carlos nourished
towards his father a hatred which might lead to criminal attempts, but
there is no proof that such attempts were ever made. As to the fabulous
amours of the Prince and the Queen, they had never any existence save in
the imagination of poets, who have chosen to find a source of sentimental
sorrow for the Infante in the arbitrary substitution of his father for
himself in the marriage contract with the daughter of Henry the Second.
As Carlos was but twelve or thirteen years of age when thus deprived of a
bride whom he had never seen, the foundation for a passionate regret was
but slight. It would hardly be a more absurd fantasy, had the poets
chosen to represent Philip's father, the Emperor Charles, repining in his
dotage for the loss of "bloody Mary," whom he had so handsomely ceded to
his son. Philip took a bad old woman to relieve his father; he took a
fair young princess at his son's expense; but similar changes in state
marriages were such matters of course, that no emotions were likely to be
created in consequence. There is no proof whatever, nor any reason to
surmise; that any love passages ever existed between Don Carlos and his
step-mother.

As to the pr