King's own words, meant for the eyes of the cloistered nun alone.
Whilst Philip was, for the first time for twenty years, manfully
struggling against his indolence, and facing his enemies in Aragon, the
Queen, as regent of Castile, was straining every nerve to provide money
for the campaigns; and during the autumn (1643) an army of 16,000 men
was mustered in the various provinces, and sent to the King. Queen
Isabel too put her hand to the Augean stable of Madrid. Murders in the
streets and armed affrays upon trifling pretexts were as numerous as
ever, one Newsletter (25th August) enumerating four or five of such
fatal scandals during the previous few days;[7] one of which--although
that was in Valencia and is given as an instance--is curious: one Iñigo
Velasco, an actor, we are told, having been beheaded "because,
forgetting the humility of his calling, he courted ladies as impudently
as any {386} gentleman could have done." But it was noticed in Madrid
that the punishment now followed the crime more surely and more
promptly:[8] that immorality was attacked more earnestly than before,
and that the large public houses of ill-fame were being rapidly cleared
out by the new President of the Council of Castile.
The financial officers and others were also having rather a ruthless
time, for secret commissions descended upon them and their papers
without notice one after the other, and scores of thousands of ducats
of ill-gotten plunder had to be disgorged; whilst the friends of
Olivares who had survived his fall, and kept their places, were
gradually made to understand that things had altered for them.[9] The
Countess of Olivares thus far had held firmly to her footing as
Mistress of the Robes, notwithstanding the frowns of the Queen; but the
Duchess of Mantua brought matters to a head with her. As the Countess
aspired to sit upon a seat in the royal carriage instead of in the
doorway, the Duchess rose and said that that was not her place, and she
would leave the carriage. The Queen placated her, but a few days
afterwards {387} the Queen's coach was surrounded in Madrid by a crowd
that cried, "Long live the Queen, and down with the Duchess of
Olivares"; and soon orders came from the King in Aragon that the lady
was to follow her husband into retirement.
The legitimated son, too, Enrique Felipe de Guzman, who had kept close
to the King as a gentleman-in-waiting, found that the atmosphere at
Court, and especially amongst Aragonese, was antagonistic to him; and
he also was dismissed to join his father.[10]
[Sidenote: Baltasar Carlos and Juan]