“‘The story.--Count Fernan Gonzalez conquered Almanzor in Hazinas,[114] but many of his people fell there, and he and the rest that remained alive were sorely wounded. And before they were sound and well, he heard that the king of Navarre had broken into his lands, and so he commanded his people to make ready to fight against them of Navarre. And all his people told him, that their horses were aweary, and that they were aweary themselves; and although for this cause they might not forsake this thing, yet that, since both he and his people were sore wounded, they ought to leave it, and that he ought to wait till he and they should be sound again. And when the Count saw that they all wanted to leave that road, then his honor grieved him more than his body, and he said, “My friends, let us not shun this battle on account of the wounds that we now have; for the fresh wounds they will presently give us will make us forget those we received in the other fight.” And when they of his party saw that he was not troubled concerning his own person, but only how to defend his lands and his honor, they went with him, and they won that battle, and things went right well afterwards. [114] Fernan Gonzalez is the great hero of Castile, whose adventures will be noticed when we come to the poem about them; and in the battle of Hazinas he gained the decisive victory over the Moors which is well described in the third part of the “Crónica General.” “‘And you, my Lord Count Lucanor, if you desire to do what you ought, when you see that it should be achieved for the defence of your own rights and of your own people and of your own honor, then you must not be grieved by weariness, nor by toil, nor by danger, but rather so act that the new danger shall make you forget that which is past.’ “And the Count held this for a good history[115] and a good counsel; and he acted accordingly, and found himself well by it. And Don John also understood this to be a good history, and he had it written in this book, and moreover made these verses, which say thus:-- [115] “Y el Conde tovo este por buen exemplo,”--an old Castilian formula. (Crónica General, Parte III. c. 5.) Argote de Molina says of such phrases, which abound in the Conde Lucanor, that “they give a taste of the old proprieties of the Castilian”; and elsewhere, that “they show what was the pure idiom of our tongue.” Don John himself, with his accustomed simplicity, says, “I have made up the book with the handsomest words I could.” (Ed. 1575, f. 1, b.) Many of his words, however, needed explanation in the reign of Philip the Second, and, on the whole, the phraseology of the Conde Lucanor sounds older than that of the Partidas, which were yet written nearly a century before it. Some of its obsolete words are purely Latin, like _cras_ for _to-morrow_, f. 83, and elsewhere.