Thenceforward, for a time, his conduct changed. He had done his best and had not spared himself. He had prayed night and day, and had fashioned his life according to monastic counsels. But defeat, trouble, poverty and bereavement had fallen upon him in spite of all, and Philip, in the intervals of his poignant contrition, plunged into dissolute excesses that shocked and scandalised the devotees about him. Philip was forty-two, about the age when some of his forbears had developed that strain of mystic devotion that so nearly borders madness. He had no male heir, and only one tiny daughter of eight, and his troubles and excesses had prematurely aged him. All Spain demanded of him a man child to succeed to his greatness; and the remonstrances of the churchmen and the nuns at the scandal of his life were reinforced by the Emperor’s ambassadors, who urged that he should marry the girl-niece who had been betrothed to his dead son. And so history repeated itself; and, as in the case of his grandfather, Philip II., the King accepted for his wife the Austrian princess who had been destined for his daughter-in-law. Of his many illegitimate children he had only legitimised one, Don Juan José of Austria, the son of the actress Maria Calderon. He was brilliant and handsome, and had won his father’s regard; but he could never be King of Spain; and Philip, with little enthusiasm, wedded an immature girl for the sake of giving an heir to his country, and for the maintenance of the solidarity of the house of Austria, which typified the old impossible claim of Spain to dictate the religion of the world. It was a disastrous resolve, which ensured the consummation of ruin to the country and the cause which it was intended to benefit.