Note 30 — MÉRIMÉE'S HISTORY OF PETER THE CRUEL. [20]

"According to the interpolator of the chronicle of the Despensero Mayor, Simuel Levi, whose death he erroneously fixes in the year 1366, was denounced to the king by several Jews, envious of his immense riches. Simuel, on being put to the torture, died of indignation, 'de puro corage,' says the anonymous author, whom I copy, since I cannot understand him. There were found, in a vault beneath his house, three piles of gold and silver lingots, so lofty 'that a man standing behind them was not seen.' The king, on beholding this treasure, exclaimed—'If Don Simuel had given me the third part of the smallest of these heaps, I would not have had him tortured. How could he consent to die rather than speak?' Sumario de los Reyes de España, p. 73. Credat Judæus Apella."—Mérimée, p. 317.

Don Pedro was often accused of avarice, although it appears probable that his fondness of money sprang from his experience of the power it gave, and of its absolute necessity in the wars in which he was continually engaged, rather than from any abstract love of gold. When, after his flight from Spain in 1366, his treasures were traitorously given up to his rival by Admiral Boccanegra, who had been charged to convey them to Portugal, they amounted to thirty-six quintals of gold, (something like fourteen hundred thousand pounds sterling—a monstrous sum in those days,) besides a quantity of jewels.