It was from the top of the Miguelete Tower, which is pictured in my illustration of the Cathedral, that he showed his wife Ximena and their daughters the fair land he had conquered. This was in 1095, when after having rejoined Alfonso and left him again, he had returned and recaptured the city after a siege of twenty months. Four years later died the man whose name was a terror to the Infidel, and his widow Ximena, following the traditions of her warrior husband, held Valencia against overwhelming hordes of Moors. The story of the bitter end, how she placed his body on his favourite war-horse and drove it through the ranks of the enemy, has always been a theme for the balladmonger of Spain. It was in 140 B.C. that Junius Brutus founded a small Roman colony on the banks of the river Turia. Pompey destroyed this settlement and rebuilt it. In 413 the Goths took possession. The Emir of Cordova captured it in 714 and Valencia remained a vassal state until the fall of the Omayeh dynasty. Like other provinces, it became merged under the single banner that floated over the greater part of the Peninsula at the union of Aragon and Castile. Being a coast town and savouring of the south, it was not until the time of the bigoted Philip III. that the industrious and unfortunate Moriscoe was finally expelled from the shelter of Valencia's walls. [Illustration: VALENCIA. SAN PABLO] Souchet sacked the place in the Napoleonic wars and received the title of Duke of Albufera from his master. Rather an empty honour, Albufera being the large and malarious tract of marshland along the coast a few miles to the south of El Grao, and worth but very little.