One of his strange whims at this time was to pass hours alone in the new jasper mausoleum at the Escorial, to which the bodies of his ancestors had just been transferred. He wrote after one of these visits in 1654:—‘I saw the corpse of the Emperor whose body, although he has been dead ninety-six years, is still perfect, and by this is seen how the Lord has repaid him for his efforts in favour of the faith whilst he lived. It helped me much: particularly as I contemplated the place where I am to lie, when God shall take me. I prayed Him not to let me forget what I saw there;’[249] and shortly after this another contemporary records that the King passed two solitary hours on his knees on the bare stones of the mausoleum before his own last resting-place in prayer; and that when he came out his eyes were red and swollen with weeping.[250] Again, in August 1656, a girl child was born to Mariana only to die the same day, and then depression, utter and profound, fell upon Philip and his wife, for no ray of light came from any direction. There was no money for the most ordinary needs. The Indian treasures were regularly captured by the English, who closely invested Cadiz itself, whilst the French on the Flanders frontier and in Catalonia worked their will almost without impeachment, and the Portuguese defied their old sovereign. Philip was ready to make peace almost at any sacrifice, at least with the French; but the demands of Mazarin were as yet too humiliating for a power which had claimed for so long the predominance in Europe. At length, in the midst of the distress, hope dawned once more, and again the wiseacres predicted that this time the Queen would give birth to a son. Mariana’s every fancy was gratified.[251] Water parties on the lake at the Retiro, endless farces, as usual, capricious bull feasts, and diversions of all sorts, kept up her spirits; and Don Juan sent another sumptuous bed and furniture more splendid than the previous gift. Whilst this waste was going on in one direction, taxes were being piled up in a way that made them unproductive, and such was the penury in the King’s palace that Philip himself, on the vigil of the Presentation of the Virgin (20th November 1657), had nothing to eat but eggs without fish, as his stewards had not a real of ready money to pay for anything (Barrionuevo). Exactly a week after the King was reduced to such straits, the child of his prayers arrived. An heir was born at last to the weary man of fifty-two, whose crown was crushing him.