But an object of livelier interest to the emperor than either of his sisters was a boy, scarcely twelve years of age, who resided in the family of his major-domo, Quixada, in the neighboring village of Cuacos. This was Don John of Austria, as he was afterwards called, the future hero of Lepanto. He was the natural son of Charles, a fact known to no one during the father's lifetime, except Quixada, who introduced the boy into the convent as his own page. The lad, at this early age, showed many gleams of that generous spirit by which he was afterwards distinguished,--thus solacing the declining years of his parent, and affording a hold for those affections which might have withered in the cold atmosphere of the cloister. Strangers were sure to be well received who, coming from the theatre of war, could furnish the information he so much desired respecting the condition of things abroad. Thus we find him in conference with an officer arrived from the Low Countries, named Spinosa, and putting a multitude of questions respecting the state of the army, the organization and equipment of the different corps, and other particulars, showing the lively interest taken by Charles in the conduct of the campaign.[304] [Sidenote: HIS INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS.] It has been a common opinion, that the emperor, after his retirement to Yuste, remained as one buried alive, totally cut off from intercourse with the world;--"as completely withdrawn from the business of the kingdom and the concerns of government," says one of his biographers, "as if he had never taken part in them;"[305]--"so entirely abstracted in his solitude," says another contemporary, "that neither revolutions nor wars, nor gold arriving in heaps from the Indies, had any power to affect his tranquillity."[306]