The person whom the emperor selected for this delicate office was the learned Sepulveda. Sleidan he condemned as a slanderer; and Giovio, who had taken the other extreme, and written of him with what he called the "golden pen" of history, he no less condemned as a flatterer.[361] Charles encouraged Sepulveda to apply to him for information on matters relating to his government. But when requested by the historian to listen to what he had written, the emperor refused. "I will neither hear nor read," he replied, "what you have said of me. Others may do this when I am gone. But if you wish for information on any point, I shall be always ready to give it to you."[362] A history thus compiled was of the nature of an autobiography, and must be considered, therefore, as entitled to much the same confidence, and open to the same objections, as that kind of writing. Sepulveda was one of the few who had repeated access to Charles in his retirement at Yuste;[363] and the monarch testified his regard for him, by directing that particular care be taken that no harm should come to the historian's manuscript before it was committed to the press.[364] Such are some of the most interesting traits and personal anecdotes I have been able to collect of the man who, for nearly forty years, ruled over an empire more vast, with an authority more absolute, than any monarch since the days of Charlemagne. It may be thought strange that I should have omitted to notice one feature in his character, the most prominent in the line from which he was descended, at least on the mother's side,--his bigotry. But in Charles this was less conspicuous than in many others of his house; and while he sat upon the throne, the extent to which his religious principles were held in subordination by his political, suggests a much closer parallel to the policy of his grandfather, Ferdinand the Catholic, than to that of his son, Philip the Second, or of his imbecile grandson, Philip the Third. But the religious gloom which hung over Charles's mind took the deeper tinge of fanaticism after he had withdrawn to the monastery of Yuste. With his dying words, as we have seen, he bequeathed the Inquisition as a precious legacy to his son. In like manner, he endeavored to cherish in the Regent Joanna's bosom the spirit of persecution.[365] And if it were true, as his biographer assures us, that Charles expressed a regret that he had respected the safe-conduct of Luther,[366] the world had little reason to mourn that he exchanged the sword and the sceptre for the breviary of the friar,--the throne of the Cæsars for his monastic retreat among the wilds of Estremadura. * * * * *