But, though a priest and a _trovador_ proud of his double office, Berceo claims his wages without a touch of false shame. In his _Vida del glorioso Confesor Sancto Domingo de Silos_ he proves the overlapping of his functions by styling himself the saint's _juglar_; and in the opening of the same poem he vouches for it that his song "will be well worth, as I think, a glass of good wine": "_Bien valdrá, commo creo, un vaso de bon vino._" As popularity grew, modesty disappeared. The _trovador_, like the rest of the world, failed under the trials of prosperity. He became the curled darling of kings and nobles, and haggled over prices and salaries in the true spirit of "our eminent tenor." In a rich land like France he was given horses, castles, estates; in the poorer Spain he was fain to accept, with intermittent grumblings, embroidered robes, couches, ornaments—"_muchos paños é sillas é guarnimientos nobres_." He was spoon-fed, dandled, pampered, and sedulously ruined by the disastrous good-will of his ignorant betters. These could not leave Ephraim alone: they too must wed his idols. Alfonso the Learned enlisted in the corps of _trovadores_, as Alfonso II. of Aragón had done before him; and King Diniz of Portugal followed the example. To pose as a _trovador_ became in certain great houses a family tradition. The famous Constable, Álvaro de Luna, composes because his uncle, Don Pedro, the Archbishop of Toledo, has preceded him in the school. Grouped round the commanding figure of the Marqués de Santillana stand the rivals of his own house-top: his grandfather, Pedro González de Mendoza; his father, the Admiral Diego Furtado de Mendoza, a picaroon poet, spiteful, brutal, and witty; his uncle, Pedro Vélez de Guevara, who turns you a song of roguery or devotion with equal indifference and mastery. Santillana's is "a numerous house, with many kinsmen gay"; still, in all save success, his case typifies a dominant fashion. In the society of clerkly magnates the _trovador's_ accomplishments developed; and the equipped artist was expected to be master of several instruments, to be pat with litanies of versified tales, and to have Virgil at his finger-tips. Schools were founded where aspirants were taught to _trobar_ and _fazer_ on classic principles, and the breed multiplied till _trovador_ and _juglar_ possessed the land. The world entire—tall, short, old, young, nobles, serfs—did nought but make or hear verses, as that _trovador_ errant, Vidal de Besalu, records. It may be that Poggio's anecdote of a later time is literally true: that a poor man, absorbed in Hector's story, paid the spouter to adjourn the catastrophe from day to day till, his money being spent, he was forced to hear the end with tears.