The king pressed her hand to his lips with fervor. “May ruin seize me,” cried he, “If I speak to prove thee. My heart, my kingdom, are at thy command. Only be mine, and thou shalt rule absolute mistress of myself and my domains.” The damsel rose from the earth where she had hitherto knelt, and her whole countenance glowed with virtuous indignation. “My lord,” said she, “I am your subject, and in your power; take my life if it be your pleasure, but nothing shall tempt me to commit a crime which would be treason to the queen, disgrace to my father, agony to my mother, and perdition to myself.” With these words she left the garden, and the king, for the moment, was too much awed by her indignant virtue to oppose her departure. We shall pass briefly over the succeeding events of the story of Florinda, about which so much has been said and sung by chronicler and bard; for the sober page of history should be carefully chastened from all scenes that might inflame a wanton imagination—leaving them to poems and romances, and such like highly seasoned works of fantasy and recreation. Let it suffice to say that Don Roderick pursued his suit to the beautiful Florinda, his passion being more and more inflamed by the resistance of the virtuous damsel. At length, forgetting what was due to helpless beauty, to his own honor as a knight, and his word as a sovereign, he triumphed over her weakness by base and unmanly violence. There are not wanting those who affirm that the hapless Florinda lent a yielding ear to the solicitations of the monarch, and her name has been treated with opprobrium in several of the ancient chronicles and legendary ballads that have transmitted, from generation to generation, the story of the woes of Spain. In very truth, however, she appears to have been a guiltless victim, resisting as far as helpless female could resist, the arts and intrigues of a powerful monarch, who had naught to check the indulgence of his will, and bewailing her disgrace with a poignancy that shows how dearly she had prized her honor. In the first paroxysm of her grief she wrote a letter to her father, blotted with her tears and almost incoherent from her agitation. “Would to God, my father,” said she, “that the earth had opened and swallowed me ere I had been reduced to write these lines. I blush to tell thee, what it is not proper to conceal. Alas, my father! thou hast intrusted thy lamb to the guardianship of the lion. Thy daughter has been dishonored, the royal cradle of the Goths polluted, and our lineage insulted and disgraced. Hasten, my father, to rescue your child from the power of the spoiler, and to vindicate the honor of your house.”