In 1558, the year after his retirement to Yuste, Charles the Fifth, whether from a wish to see his son, or, as is quite as probable, in the hope of making Quixada more contented with his situation, desired his major-domo to bring his family to the adjoining village of Cuacos. While there, the young Geronimo must doubtless sometimes have accompanied his mother, as he called Doña Magdalena, in her visits to the monastery. Indeed, his biographer assures us that the sight of him operated like a panacea on the emperor's health.[131] We find no allusion to him, however, in any of the letters from Yuste; and, if he did go there, we may be sure that Charles had sufficient control over himself not to betray, by any indiscreet show of fondness, his relationship to the child.[132] One tradition respecting him lingered to a late period among the people of Cuacos, where the peasants, it is said, pelted him with stones as he was robbing their orchards. It was the first lesson in war of the future hero of Lepanto. [Sidenote: DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA.] There is no reason to doubt that the boy witnessed the obsequies of the emperor. One who was present tells us that he saw him there, dressed in full mourning, and standing by the side of Quixada, for whose page he passed among the brethren of the convent.[133] We may well believe that a spectacle so solemn and affecting as these funeral ceremonies must have sunk deep into his young mind, and heightened the feelings of veneration with which he always regarded the memory of his father. It was, perhaps, the appearance of Geronimo as one of the mourners that first suggested the idea of his relationship to the emperor. We find a letter from Quixada to Philip, dated soon after, in which he speaks of rumours on the subject as current in the neighbourhood.[134]