"Sire, recognise what we are, and what our rights are!"
"Justice of God!" exclaimed Don Sancho, now no longer able to restrain his anger. "Must I tolerate that traitor vassals should threaten me in my own palace? No, as God lives, no! there are executioners in my Court who this very day shall make your heads roll in the dust!" Then, turning towards the door of the apartment, he called out in a loud voice, "My guards hither! My guards hither!"
About a dozen archers immediately appeared, to whom the king said—
"Lead off these traitor nobles and shut them up in a prison, from which they shall only come forth to the scaffold."
The archers were about to obey the king, when those men, who had showed themselves so audacious only a few moments before, bent their knees before the enraged monarch, stricken with terror—
"Pardon, sire, pardon!"
Don Sancho made a sign to the archers to retire, and darting a glance at the nobles, which expressed both the contempt and indignation that filled his soul, he said to them—
"Rise, despicable cowards; men as noble as you say you are should not touch the floor with their immaculate brows. Be off from my sight; such baseness afflicts my soul. Depart from my Court at once, and never return to it, for if my eyes rest on you again, they shall be as those of the basilisk, which kills by its glances."
The counts hastened to quit the Alcazar, and even the city, with all the haste which the king had commanded.