Open and generous, Enrique makes gifts to all, forgetting he has as yet nothing to bestow. Condes and princedoms drop from his hand on all around (real _châteaux en Espagne_). There is no end to his _largesse_, and so successful is this method that in twenty-five days he holds the south and marches on Toledo, where he is received with cries of “Long live Enrique the merciful, who comes to save us from our enemy, Don Pedro.” * * * * * Again Enrique is at the lordly Alcazar overlooking the everlasting plains, from whence he was so ignominiously driven by Don Pedro and the Jews. Again behold him, the very picture of a young king whom fortune favours, as he descends the stately flights of stairs and moves once more among the magnificent ranges of colonnades which hold up the great _patio_, to receive the salutations of long lines of knights and nobles who have flocked from all parts to his standard. What a tossing of feathers and flash of arms around! True lovers’ knots on shields and shoulders, helmets shaded with waving plumes, lances bound with gaily-embroidered scarves, the inlaid handles of swords and falchions sparkling with gems, and corselets and breastplates bound in with glittering girdles. Enrique comes in war but he wears the dress of peace, as one at ease, certain of success. Let Pedro flaunt the morions, casques, shields, bucklers, and weapons of conflict, Enrique has already assumed the _débonnaire_ air of a well-established monarch sure of his subjects’ love. (That he is a bastard with no legal right to the throne is forgotten in the general triumph.) Graceful and polished in his manners as becomes _El Rey Caballero_, the personal charm he exercises over all who approach him is unbounded, especially when compared to the morose cynicism of Don Pedro, who mocks ere he destroys. Sir Hugh Calverley and many English knights and esquires of the free companies which have overrun France in the late wars are with him during the present inactivity of the Black Prince at Bordeaux, and his old friend and loyal supporter, the Asturian noble, Don Jaime Alvarez, rules his counsels as heretofore. Pope Urban V., incensed at the blasphemies and profligacy of Don Pedro, subsidises and blesses him. Even the rough warrior Du Guesclin yields to the fascination of his address, an influence destined soon to lead him to the commission of a crime by which his good name is for ever tarnished. No female element fills in the frame of this chivalrous court. He has a wife, her name casually occurs, but there all information ends. At all events, no woman takes a prominent part in his career, as with his brother Don Pedro.