With regard to the marriage of Carlos, Isabel was indefatigable in her efforts, but the prince grew more reckless than ever. In the spring of 1562 he was studying at the University of Alcalá, when, in descending a dark stairway to keep a secret assignation, he fell and fractured his skull. Philip and his wife were at Madrid when they received the news, and the King at once set out, travelling through the night full of anxiety for his son. He found him unconscious and partially paralysed: the doctors, ignorant beyond conception, treated him in a way that seems to us now nothing less than murderous. Purges, bleeding, unguents, charms, and, finally, the laying upon the bed of the unconscious lad the mouldering body of a monkish saint, Diego, were all tried in vain, until at last an Italian surgeon was bold enough to perform the operation of lifting the bone of the cranium that pressed upon the brain, and Don Carlos recovered his consciousness. But if he had been a semi-imbecile before, he became at intervals after this accident a raving homicidal maniac. The prince himself, and those who surrounded him, attributed his recovery to the mummy of the dead monk, and promised to give for religious purposes in recognition of the miracle four times his own weight in gold. When he was weighed for the purpose it was found that, although he was seventeen years old, he only weighed seventy pounds. But, no matter how weak or vicious Carlos might be, the struggle to obtain his hand in marriage was waged as keenly as ever by Isabel and her mother on the one hand, and by the Austrian interest on the other, with the Princess Joan, the lad’s aunt, as a permanent candidate, to be used by Philip when he needed a diversion. Hardly had the grave anxiety about Carlos subsided when Isabel herself fell grievously ill, and was like to die. At the time that the physicians had abandoned hope of saving her (August 1562), Philip sent the Duke of Alba with a long message to the French ambassador, of which the latter wrote a copy to Catharine. He prefaces his letter by saying that the Queen was truly a bond of peace since she ‘possède le roi son mari, et est aujourd’hui en toute privauté et autorité avec lui.’ The message was to the effect that it had always been the rule when Spanish queens were ill, even slightly, to urge them to make their last dispositions in good time. On account, however, of the great love and extreme affection which he (Philip) bore to his wife, he had not allowed her in her present serious illness to be spoken to on the subject, so as not to distress or alarm her. For, as he said, he had in very truth good reason to love her dearly, and to take great care of her; and if this loss should befall him, he would have reason to say that it was the greatest and most important he had ever suffered in his life, and that which most nearly touched his heart, seeing the shining virtues and noble qualities with which his wife was endowed.