He was good-hearted and really loved his subjects, but he had never learnt to rule, for he had never ruled his own passions or curbed his inclinations; and he was in despair when the truth came to him, bit by bit. Frantic prayers; tears and vows of amendment were his way of dealing with all the blows of fortune: but there were others at his side who were more practical and determined than he. For years the yoke of Olivares and his wife had galled the neck of Isabel. Fond of pleasure as she was, she had a statesman’s mind, and her love for her promising son Baltasar, now aged thirteen, and the pride of his parents’ heart, had sharpened her wits as she saw his great inheritance slipping away from him under the rule of a minister whom she personally disliked for his rudeness even to her.[226] Again and again she had urged Philip to play the man and head his own armies in the field. Philip was willing, even eager, to do so; but Olivares would not hear of it, and the breach widened between the Queen and the minister. Olivares was detested by most of the principal nobles and churchmen. His policy of war could only be paid for out of the plunder derived from them, since all other classes were reduced to poverty, and the elements of discontent gradually grouped around Isabel. At last Isabel’s prayers, for once, overrode Olivares’ counsel, and Philip stood firm in his determination to lead his own armies to rescue Catalonia from the French. Olivares left no stone unturned to defeat the Queen. Obedient physicians certified that the voyage would injure the King’s health, submissive Councils voted against the risk of the sovereign’s life in war, and constitutional lawyers laid down that it was not proper for the King to go. Philip, tired out at last, snatched a report of the Council from the hands of the Protonotary who was about to present it, and, tearing it into pieces, cried, ‘Bring me no more reports about my going to Catalonia, but prepare for the journey, for go I will.’ The royal confessor—of course a creature of Olivares—added his remonstrance against the King’s journey, but was at once stopped by Philip, and was told that if Olivares did not want to go he could stay away; and if he was not at Aranjuez when the King passed through he would not wait for him.