The intriguing spirit which animated the subjects of a monarchy essentially elective, but one where courtesy and real or apparent merit occasionally made an exception in favor of hereditary descent, had established, among the Visigoths, the custom of retaining near the throne the children of powerful families; nominally for purposes of education, but in fact to insure the fidelity of their relatives often entrusted with the custody of frontier strongholds or important military commands. The sons, until they attained to manhood, served as pages in the royal household, and were trained in all the manly and martial exercises of the time. The attendants of the queens were recruited from the noble maidens, whom this prudent custom placed and retained in the precincts of the court, and who were carefully instructed in the few but graceful accomplishments indispensable to the position of ladies of distinguished lineage. Among the latter, at the court of Roderick, was the daughter of Count Julian, formerly a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, and the commandant of the fortress of Ceuta; whom political necessity, the isolation consequent upon the subjugation of every Greek settlement in Africa, and the rapidly increasing power of the Moors, had compelled to appeal to the nearest Christian monarch for protection, and to transfer his allegiance to the court of Toledo. This girl, who was of great beauty, excited the licentious desires of the King, who, failing to accomplish his object by fair means, in an evil hour resorted to force. Informed of the injury which had been inflicted upon his family, Count Julian, braving without hesitation the storms of winter, hastened to the capital. Dissembling, with true Greek astuteness, his outraged feelings, he asked permission to remove his daughter to the bedside of her mother whom he represented as being dangerously ill. Without any misgivings Roderick granted the request, and, manifesting every appearance of respect and loyalty, the veteran officer left the court and retraced his steps. No sooner had he arrived at his post, than he began to carry out the plan of vengeance which he had already fully matured. The castle of Ceuta was the key of Europe. Impregnable to all the resources of military engineering in an age when gunpowder was unknown, its value as an obstacle to foreign invasion was not understood by the Visigoths. The immunity of centuries; the contempt for barbarians; the ignorance of the mighty and unexampled power of Islam; the inertia produced partly by the influence of climate, but principally by an abuse of all the pleasures of unbridled luxury, had disposed the sovereigns of Toledo to consider their kingdom inaccessible to attack, and their empire eternal. As has already been mentioned, this haughty and corrupt nation was constantly agitated and its integrity menaced by a score of discordant factions. Its recent monarchs had bent all their energies to the abrogation