Stories innumerable are told of this king, a good many, no doubt, being pure inventions. There is no reason to question the account of his treatment of Abu Saïd, the Moorish Sultan of Granada. This prince had usurped his throne, and being solicitous of Pedro’s alliance, came to visit him at the Alcazar with a magnificent retinue. The costliest presents were offered to the Castilian king, whose heart, however, was bent on possessing the superb ruby in the regalia of his guest. Before many hours had passed, the Moors were seized in their apartments and stripped of their raiment and valuables. Abu Saïd, ridiculously tricked out, was mounted on a donkey, and with thirty-six of his courtiers, hurried to a field outside the town, where they were bound to posts. A train of horsemen appeared, Don Pedro at their head, and transfixed the helpless men with darts, the king shouting, as he hurled his missiles at his luckless guest: ‘This for the treaty you made me conclude with Aragon! This for the castle you took from me!’ The ruby which had been the cause of the Moor’s death was presented by his murderer to the Black Prince, and now adorns the crown of England. Nor did Pedro confine his fury to the sterner sex. Doña Urraca Osorio, because her son was concerned in Don Enrique’s uprising, was burned at the stake on the Alameda. Her faithful servant, Leonor Dávalos, seeing that the flames had consumed her mistress’s clothing, threw herself into the pyre to cover her nakedness, and was likewise burnt to ashes. Having conceived a passion for Doña Maria Coronel, the king caused the husband to be executed in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his entreaties and threats, took the veil and destroyed her beauty by means of vitriol. Pedro at once transferred his attentions to her sister, Doña Aldonza, and met with more success. If a chronicler is to be believed, he threw his brother Enrique’s young daughter naked to the lions, like some Christian virgin martyr. The generous (or possibly overfed) brutes refused the proffered prey, and the whimsical tyrant ever afterwards treated the maiden kindly. In memory of her experience, she was known as ‘Leonor de los Leones.’