ndemned to death. But he appealed to the king
who, with a witty parody of the rival Court, changed the punishment to
suspension from his trade, and ordered the cobbler for twelve months to
make no boots.

On the other hand, the Alcazar itself has been the scene of Pedro's
vilest crimes, in the whole list of which is none more insolent, none
more treacherous, than that whereby he secured the priceless ruby which
graces still the royal crown of England. There is a school of historians
which insists on finding a Baptist Minister in every hero--think what a
poor-blooded creature they wish to make of the glorious Nelson--but no
casuistry avails to cleanse the memory of Pedro of Castille: even for
his own ruthless age he was a monster of cruelty and lust. Indeed the
indignation with which his biographers have felt bound to charge their
pens has somewhat obscured their judgment; they have so eagerly insisted
on the censure with which themselves regard their hero's villainies,
that they have found little opportunity to explain a complex character.
Yet the story of his early life affords a simple key to his maturity.
Till the age of fifteen he lived in prisons, suffering with his mother
every insult and humiliation, while his father's mistress kept queenly
state, and her children received the honours of royal princes. When he
came to the throne he found himself a catspaw between his natural
brothers and ambitious nobles. His nearest relatives were ever his
bitterest enemies, and he was continually betrayed by those he trusted;
even his mother delivered to the rebellious peers the strongholds and
the treasures he had left in her charge and caused him to be taken
prisoner. As a boy he had been violent and impetuous, yet always loyal:
but before he was twenty he became suspicious and mistrustful; in his
weakness he made craft and perfidy his weapons, practising to compose
his face, to feign forgetfulness of injury till the moment of vengeance;
he learned to dissemble so that none could tell his mind, and treated no
courtiers with greater favour than those upon whose death he had already
determined.

Intermingled with this career of vice and perfidy and bloodshed is the
love of Maria de Padilla, whom the king met when he was eighteen, and
till her death loved passionately--with brief inconstancies, for
fidelity has never been a royal virtue; and she figures with gentle
pathos in that grim history like wild perfumed flowers on a sto