But though the lieges might still enjoy their brilliant shows as of yore, Philip himself had become introspective and gloomy; and he attended the bull-fights and parades with sad, weary face. He wrote weekly to the nun deploring his frailty, and beseeching her intercession; but it is clear that he had thrown over most of his good resolutions, for Don Luis de Haro was as necessary to him as Olivares had been; and the fragile beauties of the capital found in him again as ardent an admirer as ever.[25] The departure of the bride who was to rescue him from his evil life was long delayed for want of money, both on the part of her father the Emperor, and of Philip;[26] and, notwithstanding the King's saintly contrition after his faults, the talk of his loose and idle life began to make him personally unpopular with many, who thought that his place was with his army in Catalonia rather than in the Retiro sunk in slothful pleasures.[27] {407} [Sidenote: An execution] In September, a great Aragonese noble of turbulent antecedents, the Duke of Hijar, with three other nobles of rank, were suddenly seized and committed to prison in Madrid. The accusation against them was that they had plotted against the crown: some said in favour of the King of Portugal, others in favour of France; but the King specially assured the nun that there had not been discovered any design against his life. The Duke, as soon as he was arrested, endeavoured to implicate Sor Maria in the plot, and produced a letter from her to him. In a note in her own hand on the King's account written to her of the execution of the prisoners in December, she explains the matter. Hijar, it appears, had written to her hinting at some plan against the Government being in contemplation, and asking her advice. She had replied deploring such wickedness, and had referred him to the King. The nun says that many had been the attempts to bring her into trouble about it; but that in all his letters to her referring {408} to the plot the King had never even mentioned her connection with the matter, which showed that he, at least, did not believe that she was culpably concerned. The King, indeed, in his letters rather makes light of the affair, as being "the most foolish conspiracy ever conceived," and he evidently did not think that the Duke of Hijar was the prime mover in the affair; as repeated torture having failed to wring any incriminatory admissions from the Duke, the judges sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment only, though we are told that the torture had made him a cripple for life, both hand and foot. One of the other conspirators died of a fit in the prison soon after the death sentence was passed, his fate, as Philip wrote to the nun, being worst of all, since he had died unabsolved. [Sidenote: The "Hijar conspirators"]