Before Charles succeeded to his Spanish kingdoms, his sister Mary had already left home for her short, though comparatively happy, marriage with the ill-fated Louis of Hungary, while Isabella had begun her miserable life with the brutal and licentious Christian II. of Denmark. His brother Ferdinand and his youngest sister Katharine were being brought up in Spain. Only Charles's eldest sister Eleanor remained at Brussels. About this time she seems to have had a rather serious flirtation with the handsome Count Palatine Frederick, who was the most accomplished nobleman of the Court, and though seventeen years his senior, Charles's earliest personal friend. The affection between the count and Eleanor was mutual, and led to clandestine correspondence. Chièvres set Charles on the track of one of the count's love-letters. Pretending to wish his sister good-morning, he snatched it from her bosom before she had time to read it, and after a brief scrimmage secured the prize. 'Upon this his constancy into a like affair,' wrote Spinelli to Henry VIII., 'many do conject in him good stomak and couraggy, and how he will be fast in his determjnacions, and much extime the honnor of the worlde.' This singularly sound forecast of the character of the hitherto problematic boy of sixteen gives, perhaps, the first glimpse of his personality.[53] [53] E. Armstrong. Educated by the courtly William de Croy, Lord of Chièvres, with Adrian of Utrecht as preceptor, Charles developed manners and characteristics, half patrician, half plebeian, which was probably due to his tutors' opposite influences. De Croy's courteous manners gave him a stately bearing, reserve, and dignity which subsequently attached him to the Spaniards; while from Adrian he acquired the popular, easy-going and simple ways which made him so beloved by his Flemish subjects. [Illustration: CHARLES V FROM THE PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE (FLEMISH SCHOOL)] His intellectual faculties did not develop early--he even showed marked aversion for science and letters, and preferred military exercises to the study of government. De Chièvres, however, made him study the history not only of his own kingdoms, but of those with which they were connected. He accustomed him, from the time of his assuming the government of Flanders, to attend to business, and persuaded him to read all papers relating to public affairs, to be present at the deliberations of his privy-councillors, and to propose to them himself those matters concerning which he required their opinion. From such an education Charles contracted habits of gravity and recollection which scarcely suited his youth. The first openings of his genius did not show that superiority which its maturer age displayed.[54] [54] Prescott.