From the use of _Señores_, “Sirs,” in this passage, as well as from other lines, like v. 734 and v. 2291, I have thought the poem was either originally addressed to some particular persons, or was intended--which is most in accordance with the spirit of the age--to be recited publicly. [17] For example:-- Ferran Gonzalez non vió alli dos’ alzase · nin camara abierta nin torre.--v. 2296. Feme ante vos yo · è vuestras fijas, Infantes son è · de dias chicas.--vv. 268, 269. Some of the irregularities of the versification may be owing to the copyist, as we have but one manuscript to depend upon; but they are too grave and too abundant to be charged, on the whole, to any account but that of the original author. The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and stood looking at them. He saw his doors open and his household chests unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks, and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee, Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have done this thing unto me.’” He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his time, to win lands and fortunes from the common enemy, and providing for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him in their turn, so that he can save himself only by a bold sally, in which he overthrows their whole array. The rescue of his standard, endangered in the onslaught by the rashness of Bermuez, who bore it, is described in the very spirit of knighthood.[18] [18] Some of the lines of this passage in the original (vv. 723, etc.) may be cited, to show that gravity and dignity were among the prominent attribute of the Spanish language from its first appearance. Embrazan los escudos · delant los corazones, Abaxan las lanzas apuestas · de los pendones, Enclinaron las caras · de suso de los arzones, Iban los ferir · de fuertes corazones, A grandes voces lama · el que en buen ora nasceò: “Ferid los, cavalleros, por · amor de caridad, Yo soy Ruy Diaz el Cid · Campeador de Bibar,” etc.