The wonderful tale of Cleomades and Claremond is almost certainly of Moorish origin in a secondary sense. In his preface to Adenès' Berte aux grans Piés (Paris, 1832), M. Paulin Paris says: "I am strongly inclined to believe that the original of the fiction of Cleomades is really Spanish or Moorish. All the personages are Saracens or Spaniards; the scene is in Spain; the character of the fiction is akin to that of the fictions of the East." Keightley believed that Blanche of Castile, the wife of Louis VIII of France, had heard the tale in Spain, and had narrated it to the French poet Adenès, who cast it into literary form. Ectriva, Queen of Southern Spain, held a great tournament at Seville, at which Marchabias, Prince of Sardinia, so distinguished himself as to win her heart. She bestowed her hand upon the youthful champion, and their union was a happy one, being blessed in time with three daughters and a son. To the boy they gave the name of Cleomades, while his sisters were called Melior, Soliadis, and Maxima. Cleomades was dispatched upon his travels at an early age. But after he had visited several foreign countries he was summoned home to be present at the wedding of his sisters, who were about to be married to three great princes, all of whom were famous as practitioners of the magic art. They were Melicandus, King of Barbary; Bardagans, King of Armenia; and Croppart, King of Hungary. The last-named monarch was so unfortunate as to be a hunchback, and to his deformity he added a bitter tongue and a wicked heart. The three monarchs had encountered one another while still some distance from Seville, and had agreed to give such presents to the King and Queen as would necessitate a gift in return. Melicandus presented the royal pair with the golden image of a man, holding in his right hand a trumpet of the same metal, which he sounded if treason came near him. Bardagans gave a hen and six chickens of gold, so skilfully made that they picked up grain and seemed to be alive. Every third day the hen laid an egg of pearl. Croppart gave a large wooden horse magnificently caparisoned, which he told his hosts could travel over land and sea at the rate of fifty leagues an hour. The King and Queen, generous to a fault, invited the strangers to ask anything that it was in their power to bestow. Melicandus requested the hand of the Princess Melior, Bardagans that of Soliadis, while Croppart demanded that Maxima should be given him as a consort. The two elder sisters were pleased with their suitors, who were both handsome and amiable, but when Maxima beheld the hideous and deformed Croppart she ran to her brother Cleomades and begged him to deliver her from such an unsightly monster.