“I, for one, will stoutly defend my castle and shake off all allegiance to Alonso. I would rather join the Moors, treacherous as they are and ready to pounce on us at every corner, than submit to an inroad of new enemies to overrun the land we have rescued with so much blood. Bad enough to have Charlemagne for a neighbour, without bringing him here to rule over us with the king’s leave. They say he and his paladins are already on the march. Why cannot the king be content to name his sister’s son his successor? Whom will he find better than the son of Saldaña and a royal infanta? I love Bernardo with all my heart.” “That Alonso will never do,” rejoins the older man, “in face of his obstinate refusal to admit the legality of the marriage of Doña Ximena to the Count of Saldaña. They say he has destroyed the documents, and that Bernardo can never prove himself his father’s son.” “He has no notion of trying,” answers Don Ricardo, “as far as I can see. He is strangely indifferent to name and position.” “But is the reason of the king’s strange perversity known?” asked Don Favila. “In part it is. First there is in his head this maggot of chastity.” “He will not find that virtue among the Gallic monks he is so fond of harbouring,” Don Favila observes, twirling his black moustache. “Of all the hoary sinners----” “No matter,” interrupts Don Ricardo, “that is not to the point. You question me of the reason--if he has any tangible one and is not mad--that Alonso treats Bernardo as he does. Chastity in the first place. The propagation of his royal race offends him. He glories in the name of ‘the Chaste.’ He would have all his family the same.” “Fool,” mutters Don Favila, but he offers no further interruption. “Doña Ximena, his only sister, was destined to [Illustration: THE BRIDGE, GATEWAY, AND CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS.] become the Abbess of the great Convent of San Marcos, outside the gate of Leon, which he is building. So averse to love is he himself----” “Then why in the foul fiend’s name did he marry Queen Berta?” puts in the younger man, evidently of an impatient temperament, but Don Ricardo passes the question by as irrelevant and proceeds: “When he found that the Infanta preferred a mortal to an immortal spouse, and had actually gone the length of bearing him a child, he fell into such a state of blind rage that he declared she had never married, and shut her up with such rigour that she died.” “By Santiago, a most barbarous act,” is the response; “but saints are always cruel.” “About as barbarous,” answers Don Ricardo, “as calling in to inherit the Gothic throne a foreigner, Charlemagne, a Frank, to whom he offers the succession, when his own sister’s child is beside him branded with infamy.” “If this is the Church’s teaching, I would fain be a Mussulman. What will Bernardo say when he hears of it?”