The nun could hardly speak very clearly in reprehension of the King's
moral backsliding, although her hints even in this respect are pretty
{403} broad. But his confessor and the other friars around him did not
hesitate to do so; and people other than friars were saying that with
no heir to the crown the King must marry again. So long as Baltasar
Carlos lived, Philip had gently put aside these suggestions by saying
that his hopes were centred in his son; but when after his heir's death
his excesses in the intervals of his poignant contrition shocked the
devotees of his Court, and they added their censure to the pressure of
the laymen for another Queen-Consort, Philip consented, though without
enthusiasm, to marry again. He was only forty-two, but anxiety and
dissipation had aged him, and he was approaching the years when most of
his ancestors had developed the peculiar strain of mystic devotion that
borders upon madness, but his people clamoured for a male heir, for the
Infanta Maria Teresa was only eight, and Don Juan of Austria, popular
as he was, was impossible as King. In the letter which Philip wrote to
the nun, on the 9th January 1647, he says: "I have received a letter
from the Emperor condoling with me for the loss of my son, and at the
same time offering my niece to be my wife. As this agrees with my own
feelings, I think I may decide to accept this marriage, which is
doubtless the most fitting one for me; so I hope that our Lord will
help this with His powerful hand, so that the business may tend to His
service, and to that of my own country"; and a few weeks afterwards he
conveyed to her the intelligence that the match has been arranged.
Mariana was as yet a child, and the daughter of Philip's sister Maria.
That such a companion {404} can have been really congenial to him it is
difficult to believe, but his subjects needed an heir. The unhappy
tradition that imposed upon Spain the belief in its duty to dictate
orthodoxy to the world was not yet dead, and the solidarity of the
house of Austria was a first condition for its success. Spain had
already paid dearly for such Austrian help as she had obtained, and the
price now given for the further union was a high one indeed; for by
this dire incestuous union of Philip and his niece the consummation of
his country's ruin and the extinction of his dynasty was wrought. What
for the time being was worst of all was, that the support of Austria in
the wars that were finally to exhaust Spain was withdrawn even before
the marriage took place.
[Sidenote: The treaty of Münster]