A stony silence falls on all the company from the grim humour of the king. Don Juan is absent, but Don Rodrigues with the other familiars are there, and Emanuel _El Zapatero_, now captain of the body-guard, stands behind his chair, and as if conscious that something is about to happen, never takes his eyes from his master’s face. But the strangeness of the position reaches its climax when the emir, rising from the gold-embroidered divan on which he is stretched to pledge the king, Don Pedro neither moves nor responds in any way, but sits with his eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on the Balax in his turban. Suddenly, at some secret sign given by Emanuel, he strikes the table with his fist, and from each of the pillared openings the hall is filled with troops, armed to the teeth, and behind his chair arises, as if by magic, the naked figure of a Nubian slave bearing an axe. Ere one can draw breath he falls upon the Red King, who, taken unawares, has not even time to draw his dagger. At the same moment each Moorish knight is seized from behind by a Castilian trooper and dragged into the outer court of the Monteria, where he finds his horse, arms, and slave, receiving at the same time stern injunctions to cross the frontier of Castile before sunrise. Alone in the hall, Don Pedro advances to where the unhappy Red King lies dead upon the floor, hard by the spot where the blood of Don Fadique stains the marble. “Dog, and son of a dog!” he exclaims, “did you think to come to Seville to rival _me_? Dead or alive, I will have the rubies,” and, stooping down with his own hand he plucks them from his turban. “Such a stone as this,” he says, reflectively, holding up the Balax to the light, as if unable to detach his eyes from it, “I never saw, though I am cunning in gems. It is unequalled. It may save my crown. Who knows? Till then I will cherish it as a lover does his mistress. In my bosom I will place thee, wondrous stone, next to my heart of hearts.”[A] * * * * * Don Juan, though wholly disapproving these barbarities as useless and uncivilised, instead of falling away from his master like the rest, applies himself to strengthen his cause. To the dissipated and the young he holds out the prospect of unlimited license; to the ambitious, power; to [Illustration: Death of “El Gran Capitan.” From a Painting by M. Crespo. National Exhibition of Fine Arts, Madrid, 1884.] the covetous, domains. Nothing is left undone that can determine the wavering and secure the doubtful. “The ultimate success of the pretender of Trastamare,” he says, “is an event utterly improbable; and even should he come, it would only be to enrich his own followers by a fearful reckoning among those who have opposed him.” Subtle arguments these, and admirably suited to the temper of the times, when men’s minds were swayed either by venal and selfish motives, or by the terror of ruin and massacre. * * * * *