This was not the first time that cinnamon had been burned in the emperor’s chamber. The same was done by the Fuggers, the famous bankers of Germany, who had loaned Charles large sums for his expedition against Tunis, and entertained him at their house on his return. In this case the emperor was not offended by the odor of cinnamon, since it was modified by a different and more agreeable perfume. The bankers, grateful to Charles for breaking up a pestilent nest of Barbary pirates, threw the receipts for the money they had loaned him into the fire, turning their gold into ashes in his behalf. This was a grateful sacrifice to the emperor, whose war-like enterprises consumed more money than he could readily command. The vicinity of Yuste was reached late in November. Here resided a community of Jeronymite monks, in whose monastery he proposed to pass the remainder of his days. There were two roads by which it could be reached,—one an easy, winding highway, the other a rugged mountain-pass. But by the latter four days would be saved, and Charles, tired of the long journey, determined to take it, difficult as it might prove. He had been warned against the mountain pathway, and found it fully as formidable as he had been told. A body of hardy rustics were sent ahead, with pikes, shovels, and other implements, to clear the way. But it was choked here and there with fallen stones and trunks of trees which they were unable to move. In some localities the path wound round dizzy precipices, where a false step would have been fatal. To any traveller it would have been very difficult; to the helpless emperor it was frightfully dangerous. The peasants carried the litter; in bad parts of the way the emperor was transferred to his chair; in very perilous places the vigorous peasants carried him in their arms. Several hours of this hard toil passed before they reached the summit. As they emerged from the dark defiles of the _Puerto Nuevo_—now known as "The Emperor’s Pass"—Charles exclaimed, "It is the last pass I shall go through in this world, save that of death." The descent was much more easy, and soon the gray walls of Yuste, half hidden in chestnut-groves, came in sight. Yet it was three months before the traveller reached there, for the apartments preparing for him were far from ready, and he had to wait throughout the winter in the vicinity, in a castle of the Count of Oropesa, and in the midst of an almost continual downpour of rain, which turned the roads to mire, the country almost to a swamp, and the mountains to vapor-heaps. The threshold of his new home was far from an agreeable one.