Spain had now become so weak that the expected death of her king was the signal for a gathering of her royal neighbours, who sat around like vultures expectant of their prey until the pitiful apology of a monarch at last shuffled off this mortal coil. The last of his house to reign in Spain, intellectually degenerate and physically impotent, Charles II passed away, leaving no direct heir to the throne. Before his death, however, aware of the coalition against the throne in the event of no successor being named, Charles willed his dominions to the electoral Prince of Bavaria, whose mother was a daughter of Philip IV. But the prince died before the king, and this reopened the question of succession, which will be treated in the next chapter. * * * * * It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that a barren or a blood–fertilized soil sometimes produces the most luxuriant growth and yields the richest harvests. So with Spain. During the century of her greatest oppression, during the years of her decadence, she brought forth the flower of her literature and of her art. We may call the era of intellectual and artistic development, or rather inflorescence, by whatever name we will—Augustan, Elizabethan, or Victorian—but the fact is, the sovereign has no claim to this distinction, for he or she merely happened to reign when this took place. Thus we find during the reigns of the three Philips such world–renowned names as Garcilasso de la Vega, the historian; Las Casas, Oviedo, Bernal Diaz, and Cortes, military writers; Cervantes, author of the immortal Don Quixote; Lope de Vega, the dramatist, minor poets in great numbers, and great painters like Murillo, Ribera, and Velasquez. Titian, even, was a friend of his patron Charles I, and spent some of his last years painting portraits for Philip II. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE OF BOURBON. “The king is dead; long live the king!” Before Charles II passed away, weak and vacillating as he was, he bequeathed to his subjects a legacy of woe in the unfruitful “Wars of the Succession.” Finally, on his deathbed, through the influence of his confessor, and at the recommendation of Pope Innocent II, Charles made a will in favour of Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. When he received the news of this triumph, for which he had long been scheming, the French king joyfully exclaimed, “The Pyrenees no longer exist!” meaning that from that time France and Spain would be virtually under one sovereign, that sovereign himself. This did not actually come about; but to show how nearly the interests of the two countries were allied henceforth, let us examine the ancestry of the new king.