He ceased to find pleasure in his nets and boar spears, in the fandango and the bullfight.
Sometimes he shut himself up in an inner chamber from the eyes of his courtiers.

Sometimes he loitered alone, from sunrise to sunset, in the dreary and rugged wilderness which surrounds the Escurial.

The hours which he did not waste in listless indolence were divided between childish sports and childish devotions.

He delighted in rare animals, and still more in dwarfs.

When neither strange beasts nor little men could dispel the black thoughts which gathered in his mind, he repeated Aves and Credos; he walked in processions; sometimes he starved himself; sometimes he whipped himself.