“Therefore, my cousin, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, so treat with your master and my friend [the king of Morocco] that he may lend me, on my richest crown and on the jewels in it, as much as shall seem good to him:  and if you should be able to obtain his help for me, do not deprive me of it, which I think you will not do; rather I hold that all the good offices which my master may do me, by your hand they will come, and may the hand of God be with you.

     “Given in my only loyal city of Seville, the thirtieth year
     of my reign and the first of my misfortunes.

     “THE KING.”

In his “only loyal city” the broken man remained, until the Pope excommunicated Sancho, and till neighboring towns began to capitulate.  But he had been wounded past healing.  There was no medicine for a mind diseased, no charm to raze out the written troubles of the brain.  “He fell ill in Seville, so that he drew nigh unto death....  And when the sickness had run its course, he said before them all:  that he pardoned the Infante Don Sancho, his heir, all that out of malice he had done against him, and to his subjects the wrong they had wrought towards him, ordering that letters confirming the same should be written—­sealed with his golden seal, so that all his subjects should be certain that he had put away his quarrel with them, and desired that no blame whatever should rest upon them.  And when he had said this, he received the body of God with great devotion, and in a little while gave up his soul to God.”

This was in 1284, when he was fifty-eight years old.  At this age, had a private lot been his,—­that of a statesman, jurist, man of science, annalist, philosopher, troubadour, mathematician, historian, poet,—­he would but have entered his golden prime, rich in promise, fruitful in performance.  Yet Alfonso, uniting in himself all these vocations, seemed at his death to have left behind him a wide waste of opportunities, a dreary dearth of accomplishment.  Looking back, however, it is seen that the balance swings even.  While his kingdom was slipping away, he was conquering a wider domain.  He was creating Spanish Law, protecting the followers of learning, cherishing the universities, restricting privilege, breaking up time-honored abuses.  He prohibited the use of Latin in public acts.  He adopted the native tongue in all his own works, and thus gave to Spanish an honorable eminence, while French and German struggled long for a learning from scholars, and English was to wait a hundred years for the advent of Dan Chaucer.

Greatest achievement of all, he codified the common law of Spain in ’Las Siete Partidas’ (The Seven Parts).  Still accepted as a legal authority in the kingdom, the work is much more valuable as a compendium of general knowledge than as an exposition of law.  The studious king with astonishing catholicity examined alike both Christian and Arabic traditions, customs, and codes, paying a scholarly respect to the greatness of a hostile language and literature.  This meditative monarch recognized that public office is a public trust, and wrote:—­