As for the once powerful minister who had gone into obscurity broken-hearted, none was so poor as to do him reverence, few magnanimous enough to give him a good word. Those who had beslavered him with adulation were the first now to load him with ignominy; even the Constable of Castile, who had so willingly married his daughter to Olivares' base son, now stripped of all his honour, claimed that young Guzman's earlier marriage had been valid after all. When it was pointed out to the Constable that this would leave his daughter dishonoured, he replied: "I would rather see my daughter a bawd and free, than an honest woman and Guzman's wife."[45]
The many scathing attacks published upon Olivares and his administration, provoked by his fall, found but one able, though imprudently frank, answer, which was called _Nicandra_,[46] and is ascribed to Ahumada, the Prince's tutor, and to that staunch friend of Velazquez and of the Count-Duke, Francisco de Rioja; but now that the dust of the convulsion has cleared away, we see that it was Olivares' methods rather than his principles that were the cause of the disasters of his rule. The foreign policy which he represented was not his alone, but was the policy of the immense majority of his countrymen at the time; and if it had not brought him into antagonism with the { 374} provincial and autonomous traditions of the outer realms of the Peninsula, the principal factor of his fall would not have existed. The vast wealth which it was said he had heaped upon himself, amounting, so his enemies asserted, to the enormous total of 400,000 ducats a year, was not accumulated for personal gratification or greed, as had been the case with Lerma, nor were the sums he obtained larger than were appropriated by his great rival Richelieu. He lived very quietly, almost humbly, giving the whole of his time to work, and spent his revenues largely in the entertainment and convenience of the King.
From Loeches he soon, with the King's permission, retired to Toro, far away from Court. Even there, divested of his dignities and power, the envy and hate of his enemies pursued him. More than once in the two years that followed his retreat the King seemed inclined to recall his old minister. But watchful eyes and jealous heart always frustrated such an idea, if it was entertained. Many a time, in fear of such a calamity to them, the nobles, especially those of Aragon, urged the King to punish with death a man who had thus betrayed his confidence; but Philip was neither cruel nor unjust, and naturally drew back from such a course as this. Once it seemed as if the enemies of Olivares had almost succeeded; for in reply to an address from the ex-minister upon public affairs, in which the latter offered his services again, the King wrote from Saragossa: "In short, Count, I must reign, and my son must be crowned King of Aragon. This is difficult unless I deliver your head to my subjects, who { 375} demand it unanimously, and I cannot oppose them any further."