In any case this venerated jewel gave considerable trouble to its captors. When envious Muza followed up the march of Tarik, his lieutenant, he demanded from him all the spoil, and in particular the ever-famous table. Tarik surrendered this forthwith, but after slyly wrenching off a leg. Muza perceived the breakage, and inquired for the missing piece. "I know not," said the other; "'twas thus that I discovered it." Muza then ordered a new leg of gold to be made for the table, as well as a box of palm leaves, in which it was deposited. "This," says Ibn Hayyan, "is known to be one of the reasons why Tarik worsted Muza in the dispute they had before the Caliph as to their respective conquests." So it proved. Ibn Abdo-l-Haquem[16] relates that Muza appeared before the Caliph Al-Walid and produced the table. Tarik interposed and said that he himself had taken it, and not the other leader. "Give it into my hands," the Caliph answered, "that I may see if any piece of it be wanting," and found, indeed, that one of its feet was different from the rest. "Ask Muza," interrupted Tarik, "for the missing foot, and if he answer from his heart, then shall his words be truth." Accordingly Al-Walid inquired for the foot, and Muza made reply that he had found the table as it now appeared; but Tarik with an air of triumph drew forth the missing piece which he himself had broken off, and said: "By this shall the Emir of the Faithful recognize that I am speaking truth; that I it was who found the table." And thereupon Al-Walid credited his words and loaded him with gifts. [16] _Account of the Conquest of Spain_, published, with an English translation and notes, by John Harris Jones. London, 1858. Comparing the statements of these writers, we may be certain that the "table" was a kind of desk of Visigothic or, more probably, Byzantine workmanship, for holding the gospels on the feast-days of the national church. Probably, too, seeing that a palm-leaf box was strong enough to keep it in, its size was inconsiderable. Its value, on the statement of Ibn Abdo-l-Haquem, was two hundred thousand _dinares_. The sum of my remarks upon the Visigothic jewel-work is this. Distinguished by a coarse though costly splendour, we find in it a mingled Roman and Byzantine source, although it was upon the whole inferior to these styles, being essentially, as Amador observes, "an imitative and decadent art." Yet it did not succumb before the Moors, but lurked for refuge in the small Asturian monarchy, and later, issuing thence, extended through the kingdom of León into Castile. We find its clearest characteristics in such objects as the Cross of Angels and the Cross of Victory. Then, later still, it is affected and regenerated by the purely oriental art of the invader; and lastly, till the wave of the Renaissance floods the western world, by Gothic influences from across the Pyrenees.