Whatever may be the truth of the matter, it was soon noised about by the scandalmongers of Madrid that Villamediana had planned the whole affair, and had purposely set fire to the place that he might have an excuse for clasping the Queen in his arms. This was on the 8th April 1622; and when, in August of the same year, Villamediana was assassinated in his coach at nightfall in the Calle Mayor, within a few yards of his own house,[211] all fingers pointed to Philip himself as the instigator of the crime; and the current jingle ascribed to Lope de Vega, in which it says that ‘_el impulso fué soberano_’ echoed public opinion on the matter. No blame, however, in any case can be ascribed to Isabel, nor did Philip ever cease to hold her in affection and esteem. She was a true daughter of her father, sage in counsel, bold in action, but with a gaiety of heart that often made her pleasures look frivolous and unbecoming. More Spanish than the Spaniards, she loved the bullfight and the theatre with an intensity that delighted her husband’s subjects, who were crazy for both pastimes, but in her boisterous vitality she would often countenance amusements contrived for her which we should now think coarse. Quarrels and fights between country women would be incited, or nocturnal tumults by torchlight in the gardens of Aranjuez or the Retiro, arranged for her to witness; snakes or other noxious reptiles would be secretly set loose on the floor of a crowded theatre to the confusion of the spectators, whilst the Queen almost laughed herself into a fit, at one of the windows overlooking the scene. The Court indeed during the first years of her married life was a merry one, notwithstanding its ostentatious devotion; and, although Olivares more than once urged the King to take a more active interest in the government and give less time to his amusements, the minister’s enemies, and he had many, averred that there was nothing he really liked better than to keep the young monarch immersed in pleasure, that he himself might rule supreme.[212]