To the secret denunciations of eavesdroppers the king, unlike many of his royal contemporaries, never listened, preferring to trust to his own eyes and ears only. This manly straightforwardness inspired all his actions, and was instrumental in causing him to arrive at the truth and to do justice, and obtained for him among the people, even in his lifetime, the name of “the just.” The memory of his fame for justice has survived to this day in the current popular saying: “King Matthias is dead, justice has fled!” Although as a soldier and statesman crafty and full of expedients, and even loving disguise in contact with his people, he never was treacherous and deceitful. Poisoning and assassination did not enter into his catalogue of expedients as it did into the policy and practice of his contemporary, the French king, Louis XI., or the Italian princes, the Estes, Sforzas, the Borgias, and the popes themselves, who employed both as a favorite means for accomplishing political objects. All unclean means were repugnant to his frank and knightly nature, as was evinced by the following instance. While he was engaged in war, in 1463, against George Podiebrad, the Czech king, he was approached by a man who offered to take George’s life in armed combat for a reward of five thousand florins. The king, knowing the difficulties of the enterprise, at once consented, promising even a larger amount in case of success. This man, after lurking for a long while about the person of King George, despaired of being able to carry out his fell design, for the king was surrounded by the finest soldiers of the period, and to attack him, under those circumstances, would have been equivalent to forfeiting his own life. He therefore proposed to King Matthias to remove the Czech king by poison. The king indignantly refused to profit by the assassin’s offer, proudly exclaiming: “We are in the habit of fighting with arms and not with poison!” At the same time he sent a message to the Czech king putting him on his guard against the attempt to take his life by poison, and cautioning him not to partake of any food or drink unless it was first tested by one of his trusty men.