The rest of the papers unfold the poor sad little mystery. The babe in question was one of Philip's illegitimate children, christened Francisco Fernando, and he was probably his first son; born, as we are told in these papers, at the house of his grand-parents, who were gentlefolk, between eleven and twelve at night on the 15th May 1626; Don Francisco de Eraso, Count of Humanes,[21] leading the midwife thither and being present at the birth, the infant being conveyed immediately afterwards to the house of Don Baltasar de Alamos, Councillor of the Treasury, where a nurse awaited him, in whose care he remained until he was delivered by Olivares to his new keeper, the hidalgo of Salamanca, who belonged to a notable bureaucratic and secretarial family. The subsequent short career of the infant does not enter into our present subject; but it is fully detailed in the documents: the periodical reports of the child's progress, the grave discussions of Olivares with physicians and keepers as to his diet and health; the provisions for his proper education, his clothing and diversions, his infantile ailments, the most trivial circumstances of the child's life, are all considered and passed in review by the minister, upon whose bowed shoulders the whole work of the State rested. The little left-handed royalty, for all the care with which his life was surrounded, failed to resist the bleak air {238} of Salamanca, and on the 17th March 1634 the King's Secretary of State, Geronimo de Villanueva, of whom we shall hear again, wrote to the hidalgo Isasi Ydiaquez, saying "that his Majesty had received with the deepest grief the news of the death of Don Francisco Fernando, who showed such bright promise for his tender years, and his Majesty highly appreciated all the care that had been taken with him."[22] And a few days later, the little corpse, dressed in a red and gold gown, and enclosed in a black velvet coffin, was carried with all secrecy to the Escorial, where, in the presence of the inevitable Don Geronimo de Villanueva, the secretary and confidential agent of the King, the "body of Don Francisco Fernando, son of his Catholic Majesty Don Felipe IV.," was handed to the bishop of Avila in the porch of the church, and buried by the friars in the vaults of their monastery.