King Sancho now saw that the count was too bold and urgent a creditor to be trifled with. In his perplexity he assembled the estates of his kingdom, and consulted them upon this momentous affair. His counselors, like himself, were grievously perplexed between the sanctity of the royal word and the enormity of the debt. After much deliberation they suggested a compromise—the Count Fernan Gonzalez to relinquish the debt, and in lieu thereof to be released from his vassalage.
The count agreed right gladly to this compromise, being thus relieved from all tribute and imposition, and from the necessity of kissing the hand of any man in the world as his sovereign. Thus did King Sancho pay with the sovereignty of Castile for a horse and falcon, and thus were the Castilians relieved, by a skillful bargain in horse-dealing, from all subjection to the kingdom of Leon.[71]
CHAPTER XIX.
The Last Campaign of Count Fernan.— His Death.
The good Count Fernan Gonzalez was now well stricken in years. The fire of youth was extinct, the pride and ambition of manhood were over; instead of erecting palaces and lofty castles, he began now to turn his thoughts upon the grave and to build his last earthly habitation, the sepulchre.
Before erecting his own, he had one built of rich and stately workmanship for his first wife, the object of his early love, and had her remains conveyed to it and interred with great solemnity. His own sepulchre, according to ancient promise, was prepared at the chapel and hermitage of San Pedro at Arlanza, where he had first communed with the holy Friar Pelayo. When it was completed, he merely inscribed upon it the word “Obijt,” leaving the rest to be supplied by others after his death.