He was, as I have said, a King to visit, with nothing of Spanish inhospitality about him. He ordered all the citizens to sleep without the city walls in the ten thousand tents he had fixed in the wide Vega, and give up their houses to his foreign guests. Be sure he paid them for the sacrifice in princely style, for out of Eastern fable never was such a prince as Don Rodrigo, the last of the Goths. All the expenses of the foreigners, including their mounts and armour, were his, for they were not permitted to use their own lances, swords, armour or horses. Never were guests entertained with such prodigious splendour. He ordered palaces to be built for them, and laid injunctions on builders, furnishers and purveyors to spare neither expense nor luxury. The whole Peninsula was scoured in search of armourers and iron-workers, and over fifteen hundred master armourers with their apprentices and under-hands were hastily gathered together in Toledo in more than a thousand[6] improvised iron-shops, working for six busy months at shields and lances and exquisitely wrought damascene armour for every lord and knight, the guest of their king. Each guest on arriving received, as well as house and board, his horse, full armour, shield and lance. The tourney opened on a Sunday, and presented such a scene as imagination alone can depict. We are not told the precise spot, but we may suppose the quaint three-cornered, the ever irresistible Zocodover. Rasis el Moro records each guest's formal reply when asked if he desired to fight? "For this we have come from our lands; firstly, to serve and honour these feasts; secondly, to see how they are carried out; thirdly, to prove your body, your strength, and learn what you are worth in arms." Hearing of these great feasts, the Duchess of Lorraine, persecuted by her brother-in-law, Lembrot, came to Toledo to implore Rodrigo's protection. Rodrigo received her with cordiality, and lodged her in the royal palace, and as official defender charged Sacarus with her cause. Lembrot was called to Toledo to meet the Duchess's knight, and came with a great train. He, too, was generously entertained, and pending the clash of steel which was to decide the quarrel between Lembrot and the Duchess, the Queen gave a sarao, which was even a more brilliant and gorgeous spectacle than the tourney. Fifty ladies danced with fifty of the greatest lords, and never was such a constellation of European titles joined in a single diversion. The ladies' names are not recorded, but there were in the first dance the King of Poland, the French prince, the Emperor of Constantinople, the son of the King of England (simply called _el hijo del Rey de Inglaterra_), the Spanish infante, the Duke of Viana, the Duke of Orleans, the Count of the Marshes, the Marquis of Lombardy, and Count William of Saxony.