In the meantime, the Countess Sylvia, seated at the board in the midst of her council, was in a fury. “Look at that old man!” she cried out. “Look at his thumbs! Why does he use them upon the missive of the Castilian? Look, Sirrah Red Dragon, he is reading it upside down!” “Silence there at the top of the table,” said the duke, with the grandeur of one who has wielded an unquestioned authority for threescore years, yet having vainly endeavoured to peruse the document in the manner his daughter had indicated. “Do you read it to us, good plenipotentiary. Silence there, I say! If you do not close your trap, you hulks, I will have you flogged with severity. Silence, I say again! Ods nig and nog! was ever one who is old and a parent beset with so much incivility!” While the ambassador, a dark man in a dusty riding suit of Cordovan leather, and accompanied by a retinue of three as dusty as himself, proceeded to read the terms of the cartel aloud to the duke, his lordship’s grace fell again to devouring the ortolan. By the time the messenger had reached the part in which the Castilian bade his uncle deliver up his castle hard by the city of Toledo, and bade him retire to his lesser manor in the province of Leon, the old man began to babble and whimper, and finally to break into tears. “Look at him! look at him!” cried the Countess Sylvia. “If your lordship’s grace would wipe your old red eyes on your cuff, and eat your fowl like a Christian, and cease to roar like a horse as it walks up a hill, I and my good counsellors might frame a fitting answer to the Castilian.” “Ods myself!” snuffled his lordship’s grace, “sooner than I will be a parent again I will cut my throat.” With a proud voice the Lady Sylvia bade the envoy of the Castilian come up to the high table and present the cartel to her. She received it with every mark of disgust; and, indeed, the fingers of his lordship’s grace had robbed it of that fair appearance it may have formerly enjoyed. But when she came to read this document her mood changed to one of flaming anger, since the manner of the Castilian’s epistle was indeed of the sort to fret a lofty spirit. “‘Too long, good my uncle Roldan, hast thou held thy demesne’”--the little countess read particular passages aloud with unutterable scorn. “‘Thy situation above the great city of Toledo, the first of our realm, cannot be borne. Yourself is a good and honest prince, good my uncle Roldan, but your grace hath the whole of your worthy manor of Aldoleda in which to inhabit your excellent old age. Your noble mountain fortress is necessary to our design, for our kingdom must be so strong that we fear no enemies. We would have you deliver this fortress, together with two hundred men-at-arms, unto us within the space of twenty days; and by these presents we do engage not to molest your grace and good my uncle Roldan in your worthy manor of Aldoleda, in which fair place your honourable old age will not lack security.’”