It was not only by calling at Yuste that the noble lieges of the emperor testified their homage. Mules were driven to his gate laden with more substantial tokens of loyalty and affection. The Count of Oropesa kept his table supplied with game from the forest and the hill; and the prelates of Toledo, Mondoñedo, Segovia, and Salamanca, offered similar proofs that they had not forgotten the giver of their mitres. The Jeromites of Guadalupe, rich in sheep and beeves, sent calves, lambs fattened on bread, and delicate fruits; and from his sister Catharine, queen of Portugal, there came every fortnight a supply of conserves and linen.
The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course, left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit. Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be light.
To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven, of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice. The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be punished with a hundred stripes.