If we must hold Philip blameless with respect to his son’s imprisonment, we must still keep in suspense our judgment with regard to his responsibility for the prince’s death, because the evidence as to what passed after his arrest comes mainly from persons in the king’s interest and pay, and because the accusation that Carlos was murdered was formulated by Philip’s bitterest enemy, Antonio Perez, a man, moreover, utterly unworthy of credit, a murderer, a perjurer, and a traitor to his country. The long secret trial of the prince dragged on. Neither his aunt Juana nor his beloved stepmother was allowed to see him, and Philip even forbade his brother, Don Juan, to wear mourning for the trouble that had befallen the royal house. In the meanwhile the prince’s health visibly declined. At best he had been a continual invalid, burned up with fever and ague, but in captivity and under examination he became worse. He refused to receive the consolations of the Church, a freak upon which much superstructure has been raised. As his madness increased, like many lunatics he took to swallowing inedible things, jewelry, and other objects of the same sort, and finally refused to eat anything at all for eleven days. Then in reply to the king’s remonstrances, he gorged himself, and this brought him a return of his fever in the worst form. Every sort of mad proceeding was adopted in turn by the unhappy youth. He would half roast himself by a fire, and then put ice in his bed. First he would scornfully refuse the sacraments, and then fulfil scrupulously all the forms of his Church. At length, probably from weakness, he became calmer, and there was a momentary hope of his recovery. Llorente (whose authority is not, however, to be accepted unquestioned) says that the result of his trial was that he was “found guilty of implication in a plot to kill the king and to usurp the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and that the only punishment for this was death.” There are no trustworthy official documents known which prove this to have been the case, but nature and the prince’s mad excesses had apparently condemned him to death, independently of his faults and failings. When he was told that he was dying he conformed fervently to the rites of his Church, and sent Suarez to beg his father’s forgiveness. On July 21 the French ambassador wrote to his master that Don Carlos had eaten nothing but a few plums and sweetmeats for eight days, and was dying of weakness. “The king, his father, is much grieved, because, if he die, the world will talk. I understand that if he live, the castle of Arevalo is to be put in order, so that he may be lodged in safety and comfort.”