Many were the resources to which Charles turned for relaxation during this interval of expectation. His mornings were spent in his private affairs, among which we may reckon the cultivation of his taste for pictures; in the afternoon, accompanied by his beloved Steenie, he went forth into the fields, where Bristol attended on him with his hawks; or he visited a country house of the King’s, called Caso del Campo, where, meeting Philip and his brothers, Don Carlos and Don Fernando the Cardinal, they diverted themselves by watching “men placed there to shoot at such kinds of game as were found in the place;” hares were started, partridges sprang up, and other fowl, all of which were killed, after the custom of that day, as they went running or flying by the marksmen. Sometimes the King, with the old Spanish courtesy, sent the Prince two horses, desiring him to choose the best for himself, and to leave him the worst to ride out on; then Charles would order the steeds to be exercised in a garden near the Earl of Bristol’s house, and, not to be outdone in politeness, he would himself try them both, and send the best back for the King’s use. At length the day arrived when Charles made his solemn entry into Madrid, under circumstances of interest which almost superseded even the imposing magnificence of the ceremonial. On the sixteenth of March, he received the Inquisitor General, and all the different Councils of the kingdom—the Corregidores and the Regidores of Madrid—at the Monastery of San Geronimo, whence the Kings of Spain always make their public entrance. These public functionaries endeavoured, on being presented to the Prince, to kiss his hand, but Charles resisted this demonstration, considering that it was due only to the lawful sovereign of the realm. The magnificence of the procession that ensued owed much of its picturesque beauty to its being on horseback. As they approached the immediate precincts of Madrid—Charles riding on the right of Philip—they were met by four and twenty Legidores of the town—whose office it was to carry over the King’s head a canopy of tissue, lined with crimson cloth of gold. The King then took the Prince under the canopy, still keeping him on his right hand; before them rode the Ministers of Justice, next the grandees, sumptuously clad, for it is an old saying, that no one dresses so plainly every day, nor so gorgeously on occasions, as the Spaniards.[445] Their picturesque costumes, their grave and stately bearing, their gallant steeds—so famed throughout Europe—must have made this band of nobles one of the fairest spectacles of the time. Footnote 445: Howell’s Letters. They were apparelled, as the chronicler expresses it, “in colours and great bravery,” their servants, in rich liveries, attending.