SEVILLE
DETAILS OF THE GIRALDA TOWER.
in battle by the troops of his brother Henry and Bertrand du Guesclin, and killed in single combat by Henry.
Pedro wearied of his first wife, Blanche of Bourbon, in forty-eight hours; and, having had his marriage annulled, he espoused the handsome Juaña de Castro, only to desert her a few days later to return to his beautiful mistress, Maria de Padilla. This woman appears to have been the only person who inspired Pedro with more than a transitory passion, and the courtiers testified to the power she wielded by chivalrously drinking the waters of her bath in El Jardin del Crucero. But Pedro’s passion for his mistress, though lasting, was not monopolising, and his amours supply us with an incident which reveals at once the king’s ferocity, his humour, and his alleged respect for justice. It was his custom at night to muffle himself in a cloak and adventure alone into the city in quest of entertainment. On one of these excursions he encountered a hidalgo serenading a lady, whose favours he himself coveted. Cloaked by the dim light, and made secure by the emptiness of the street, the king fought and slew his rival, in defiance of his own order, which made street fighting punishable upon the officers of the city when they failed to bring the disturbers of the peace to justice. He had not bargained for the noise to disturb the rest of an old lady in the vicinity; he had not observed a venerable head protruding through an upper window. Believing the incident to be “wrapped in mystery,” he summoned the alcade of the city to his presence, acquainted him with the fact that the body of a hidalgo, pierced to the heart, had been found in the street, and gave him the option of discovering the murderer within forty-eight hours, or of being hanged in his stead. And hanged he doubtless would have been but for the timely confidence of the old lady who had witnessed the fight. The alcade came again to the king with the news that the murderer had been found, and would be on view upon the gallows within the time specified by Pedro. Curious to see who had been secured to expiate his sin, or eager to fasten a new dereliction of duty upon the alcade, the king went to the place of execution and found, suspended from the gallows, an effigy of himself. “Good,” said the king, “justice has been done! I am satisfied.” There is a street in Seville which is called the Calle della Cabeza del Rey Don Pedro, to commemorate the duel; and the alley from which the old lady observed the issue is known as the Calle del Candilejo, “the street of the candlestick.”