Thus at last his wickedness outgrew the people’s patience; and when the good Henry of Trastamare rose up against him, and provoked him to fight, and slew him, they all hailed the act as the execution of the sentence of Divine Justice, and acclaimed Henry as their deliverer and their ruler in his stead; for Alonso, the son of his unblessed union with Maria Padilla, whom he had forced the people to acknowledge for his successor, had been carried off by sudden death soon after; and though the daughter of his lawful marriage had married our own John of Gaunt, all his reputation, and that of the Black Prince his father, could not outweigh their disinclination for a foreign king.
With regard to the mode of Pedro the Cruel’s death, the more credited account is that his end was an episode of the siege of Montiel, where he had sought to hide himself from the victorious pursuit of Henry de Trastamare. Local tradition loves to think it found him out with poetical justice, and left its stain in the very hall which had been the scene of his wanton excesses; where others had fallen at his command, and whence the decree had gone forth for the relentless execution of his victims.
[1] It was completed 1364. [↑]
THE ADVENTURES OF DOÑA JOSEFA RAMIREZ Y MARMOLEJO.
Doña Josefa Ramirez was the only child of noble parents of Valencia. She grew up in every virtue, and joined the wisdom of a Minerva to the beauty of a Venus. She was hardly eighteen before various noble youths were contending for her good graces; but of them all the only one she favoured was Don Pedro de Valenzuela, who, though of noble lineage, yet did not possess the fortune or position that her parents thought should entitle him who wedded with the descendant of the illustrious houses of Ramirez and Marmolejo.
Little Doña Josefa did not think of all this; she was much attached to her boyish playmate, and hoped that as her parents were very fond of her she would one day win their consent to receive his attentions; in the mean time, she thoughtlessly listened with great delight when he came and sang a love song under her windows, and even, I am afraid, sometimes came to the reja[1] to give him a coy look of thanks and encouragement.
One day, as the youthful Don Pedro de Valenzuela was thus pleasantly occupied, he had finished his song and was waiting to see if a pair of bright eyes would not come sparkling behind the reja, when, his thoughts being quite engrossed by this expectation, and his attention abstracted from every thing around him, he suddenly found himself attacked from behind by two men who were wrapt up in their cloaks and masked so that he could not recognize them, nor indeed had he time to think about it, for before he could even draw his sword they had stretched him dead upon the ground; he could only cry out Josefa’s name, and expire.
Doña Josefa was thrilled with dread at the tone in which her name was uttered; it seemed to portend something dreadful, such as she had never known before. She flew to the window, and by what remained of the gloaming light, she saw her lover’s body stretched lifeless on the ground, while the assassins had escaped without leaving a trace behind.