Note 317 — Chapter IX

The Emperor intimates his wishes in regard to his grandson's succession in a letter addressed, at a later period, to Philip. (Carta del Emperador al Rey, 31 de Marzo, 1558, MS.) But a full account of the Portuguese mission is given by Cienfuegos, Vida de S. Francisco de Borja, (Barcelona, 1754,) p. 269. The person employed by Charles in this delicate business was no other than his friend Francisco Borja, the ex-duke of Gandia, who, like himself, had sought a retreat from the world in the shades of the cloister. The biographers who record the miracles and miraculous virtues of the sainted Jesuit, bestow several chapters on his visits to Yuste. His conversations with the emperor are reported with a minuteness that Boswell might have envied, and which may well provoke our scepticism, unless we suppose them to have been reported by Borja himself. One topic much discussed in them was the merits of the order which the emperor's friend had entered. It had not then risen to that eminence which, under its singular discipline, it subsequently reached; and Charles would fain have persuaded his visitor to abandon it for the Jeronymite society with which he was established. But Borja seems to have silenced, if not satisfied, his royal master, by arguments which prove that his acute mind already discerned the germ of future greatness in the institutions of the new order.—Ibid., pp. 273-279.—Ribadeneira, Vita Francisci Borgiæ, (Lat. trans., Antverpiæ, 1598,) p. 110 et seq.