The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 03: 1555Motley, John Lothrop
History
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 03: 1555
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- Church history; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small, meagre
man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and
the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. He seemed so little,
upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary,
accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was
fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament, in
which his success was sufficiently problematical. "His body," says his
professed panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and
narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven
was too contracted." [Cabrera] The same wholesale admirer adds, that
"his aspect was so reverend, that rustics who met him alone in a wood,
without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive veneration." In face,
he was the living image of his father, having the same broad forehead,
and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better proportioned, nose.
In the lower part of the countenance, the remarkable Burgundian deformity
was likewise reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a
vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was
fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed.
He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His
demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked
habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech,
embarrassed, and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a
natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and
partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate
fondness for pastry. [Bodavaro]
Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive into
his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose single will was,
for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present,
of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth,
and of countless millions yet unborn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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