Yet one more of the works of Santos should be noticed; an allegorical tale, called “Truth on the Rack, or the Cid come to Life again.” Its general story is, that Truth, in the form of a fair woman, is placed on the rack, surrounded by the Cid and other forms, that rise from the earth about the scaffold on which she is tormented. There she is forced to give an account of things as they really exist, or have existed, and to discourse concerning shadowy multitudes, who pass, in sight of the company that surrounds her, over what seems to be a long bridge. The whole is, therefore, a satire in the form of a vision, but its character is consistently sustained only at the beginning and the end. The Cid, however, is much the same personage throughout,--bold, rough, and free-spoken. He is heartily dissatisfied with every thing he finds on earth, especially with the popular traditions and ballads about himself, and goes back to his grave well pleased to escape from such a world, “which,” he says, “if they would give it to me to live in, I would not accept.”[184] [184] “El Verdad en el Potro y el Cid Resuscitado,” Madrid, 1679, 12mo, and again, 1686. The ballads cited or repeated in this volume, as the popular ballads sung in the streets in honor of the Cid, are, it is curious to observe, _not_ always to be found in any of the Romanceros. Thus, the one on the insult to the Cid’s father begins,-- Diego Lainez, el padre De Rodrigo el Castellano, Cuidando en la mengua grande Hecha á un hombre de su grado, etc. p. 9, ed. 1686. It is quite different from the ballad on the same subject in any of the ballad-books. So is the one at p. 33, upon the death of Count Lozano, as well as the one at p. 105, upon the Cid’s insult to the Pope at Rome. On hearing the last sung in the streets, the Cid is made, in the story, to cry out, “Is it pretended I was ever guilty of such effrontery? I, whom God made a Castilian,--_I_ treat the great Shepherd of the Church so?--_I_ be guilty of such folly? By St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lazarus, with whom I held converse on earth, you lie, base ballad-singer!” Several ballads might be taken from this volume and added even to the “Romancero del Cid,” Keller, Stuttgard, 1840, which is the most ample of all the collections on the Cid.