The tradition in Spain made the position of King's mistress not by any means one to be coveted by most women, since it was understood that when the liaison ended the lady must immure herself in a convent for the rest of her life, to prevent such a sacrilege as for the King to have a successor in any woman's regards. It is told of one young lady of the Court to whom Philip was making unmistakable advances, that she shut herself behind a locked door when she knew the amorous King was seeking her, and cried out to him from the inside: "No, no, sire; I don't want to be a nun!" The Calderona had no such scruples, either from natural devotion or because she really felt the honour of the King's love to be overwhelming. Her son by the King was born on the 17th April 1629, and as soon as the _Calderona_ could leave her room she sought the King, and, throwing herself at his feet in tears, prayed for his permission for the mother of his son to sin no more. For it was enough, she said, to have borne a child to the greatest monarch on earth, and nothing more was left for her but to devote the rest of her life to cloistered sanctity. Philip was deeply in love with her still; all his children by the Queen, none of whom had been sons, had expired at, or soon after, their births, and this boy by the _Calderona_ was held to be the most beautiful and perfect child ever seen. Philip tried hard to alter the resolve of his mistress, but she absolutely refused to cohabit with him again; and at last, but with sorrow, he gave way, and the actress Maria Calderon became the abbess of a remote convent, whilst her child was sent with semi-royal surroundings {209} to be educated with exquisite care at Ocaña, with a view to his future greatness. This was the background: a vast conspiracy of make-shift and of make-believe, before which the Court of Philip IV. alternately prayed and postured unconvinced. An utterly decadent society, of which each individual was striving to get as much as possible out of life without giving anything in return; a society which combined besotted superstition and abject servility to priests and ritual with appalling impiety, a society that lived from day to day for such pleasures as it could grasp, knowing that all was crumbling to dissolution beneath its feet, that squandered and lavished money, mostly ill-gotten, in empty splendour, whilst the whole nation beyond the mud walls of the "Court" was sunk in carking penury. And amidst the festivities and stage plays, the poetical recitals, the battues that stood for sport, and the _autos-de-fe_ that stood for holiness, "Philip the Great" moved like a demigod, knowing in his heart of hearts that all was hollow--his wealth a lie, his dignity a mask, and he himself but a poor sinning trifler whose coward conscience denied him even pleasure in his sin.