On seeing his good-natured gesture, he knew that his deceit had not been discovered, and, without trembling, he approached the noble knight.
"You can be useful to me," said the latter. "I do not feel disposed to go to the court. Write to the king what has happened to me and tell him that as soon as I am a little better I will come and confound those who have calumniated me."
But the peasant wrote what he liked and sent off the letter.
In it he heaped insults on the king, with the object of causing the latter to have the knight's head cut off.
The effect that the insulting letter produced was so great that the king rose in his anger and commanded Don Suero to be brought dead or alive, and that if he resisted he was to be tied to the tail of a horse.
The knight was imprisoned, but as he was so proud he would not give the king any explanations, and the latter commanded him to be tortured.
Not even the severest tortures could succeed in taming that will of iron. He was innocent, and would not ask grace of the king, who condemned him without any further motive. At length they were going to sentence him to death for his insults to the king, when one of the judges mentioned to the king the possibility of Don Suero having put his seal at the foot of a document he had not signed.
"Because," he said, "it is stated he does not know how to read and write."
"What!" angrily exclaimed the king. "Did I pass five long years in learning how to spell, and that silly Don Suero does not know how to do it? I do not believe it. If you cannot prove to me that the letter in which he calls me a weak and stupid king is unknown to him, I will have him killed to-morrow."
The judge did not neglect to see. He wrote out the sentence of death and took it to the prison, saying to the knight: