Infantes to salute their father-in-law, and the court to pronounce sentence. The Infantes, worthless scamps, stood and insolently proclaimed themselves the social superiors of their wives, whom the choice of princes had inordinately honoured. "Then why," sensibly asks the king, "did you press me to obtain for you their hands in marriage?" and proceeds to give the ladies' pedigree to the affronted Cid's delight. The wretched Infantes were very properly disgraced, when their discomfort was accentuated by the appropriate arrival of hot messengers from the kings of Aragon and Navarre, begging in marriage Doña Elvira and Doña Sol for their sons, Don Sancho and Don Ramiro. In those odd and delightful times, divorce seems to have been a matter of royal judgment or caprice. Spanish sovereigns, unlike Henry VIII., never had any difficulty in arranging those little affairs without scandal, or war, or revolution, either in their own case or in that of their vassals. Alfonso stoutly advised the Cid to accept proposals that gave his outraged and forsaken daughters kingdoms instead of obscure retreats, and bestowed the last affront on the miscreants who had offended him and them. So the scandal terminated, and the chronicler tells us that "the Infantes left the palace very sorrowful, and hastened with all speed back to Carrion." Alfonso's reign was no quiet one. He had to contend with the fierce Yussuf and his son, and grief pierced him through his young son, Sancho, whom he sent to war with Count Garcia of Cabra, when only eleven. Twenty thousand Christians, along with the brave little prince, lay dead on the battlefield, and the king's anguish, when the news reached Toledo, was overpowering. He died soon afterwards, and his body was exposed for twenty days, for the towns-people to come and gaze upon the remains of the Christian monarch.