At the secret heart of the great building, right next to the monastery church, a meagre suite of rooms is hidden. The most important pieces are a sort of study or workroom decently lighted but somehow meanly proportioned, and off it an alcove bedroom which has a shuttered little window opening into the church near the high altar. Monastery, palace and tomb prove only so many masks concealing a retreat, a refuge, almost a hiding-place.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 162