The remainder of the poem tells of the treachery and punishment of the Counts of Carrión. It begins with the incident of the lion. A lion that was kept in the court of the Cid’s house escaped one day as the Cid lay asleep. His trusty followers drew round him to keep him from harm, but of the Counts of Carrión one scrambled under the Cid’s bench, the other ran out by the door crying: “I shall not see Carrión,” and hid behind the beam of a wine-press, so that his cloak and doublet were all soiled. The Cid, having cowed the lion, “asked for his sons-in-law, but found them not. They call aloud for them, but none answers. When they found them and they came, they came all pale. You have not seen such jests as went about the Court. My Cid the Campeador ordered that they should cease.” Further events showed the small spirit and treachery of the Cid’s sons-in-law, and his daughters are ultimately betrothed to nobler men, the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon. The poem, as we have it, ends with a prayer that God may give Paradise to him who wrote (_i.e._ copied) it, and with a request for money or a glass of wine for its reciters: “Dat nos del vino si non tenedes dineros.” XVIII A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION I.--NOVEDADES The poetry of Luis de León is not voluminous; he has no great variety of theme; he sings “the quiet life of him who shuns the world’s uproar;” but there is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de León stands in the front of Spanish literature, as a writer of eloquent and well-moulded Castilian prose he has had few equals. His “Nombres de Cristo” is one of the masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences are perhaps occasionally too prolix, lengthening out in a rich profusion of words and images. He had, as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his style a colour and a sound which rank him among the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as a writer Luis de León is too well known to need comment. And to himself his literary works were of a secondary importance, and held a subordinate place in his strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of a well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he was sent by his father at the age of fourteen to the University of Salamanca with the advice to “follow the common opinion in letters, _que siguiese la opinión comun en las letras_.” The precept was not unneeded in that age, for the Reformation had unhinged men’s beliefs and left them a prey to many fears. Intolerance on the side of reformers was answered by fresh intolerance. In Spain one might least expect any dissent from the accepted religion. Even in Spain, however, the general ferment of the rest of Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and inquiry had penetrated to the Spanish Universities, and men’s minds were opening to new lines of thought. There was indeed ample scope for reform.