The Spaniard now changed his music once more into slow melancholy notes, like those of a church anthem or dirge. He described how, at the dawn of day, when the ruddy gleams of the east were on the landscape, the beautiful Donna Clara knelt on the turf beside the lifeless frame of her Moorish lover, who had been attacked in the forest, and killed by two of her own brothers. With dishevelled hair, and no longer disguising her attachment, she weeps over his pale remains. Looking up to the bright sky, she acknowledges, that even as the stars rise and set, and as the eagle hovers up and down, all in this world is variable and inconstant, only her affections are unchangeable. Therefore her brothers built for her, in after times, a lonely hermitage, with a chapel and an altar, where she spends her life in weeping and in prayers for the soul of her departed lover. The sound of the harp died away in slow vibrations, and the listeners gazed on each other in silent melancholy. Don Hernandez himself was the first to break the silence. With graceful and courteous demeanour, “No doubt,” said he, “I should both accuse and condemn myself, noble champions and gentlemen, for having thus with my mournful songs disturbed your merriment, had it not been that you desired to hear a legend from my native land. In my country, it is true, the people are serious and solemn of mood; for where there are such contentions between Moors and Christians, one’s thoughts must often turn on melancholy events,--often, for example, on death.” “Your story, (song rather I should say,) requires no such apology,” said the Knight of Montfaucon. “Can you believe that we also do not entwine dark-coloured flowers in our festal garlands? God be praised, Frenchmen are not yet depraved into such levity, that we should despise the solemn character of the Castilian heroes: besides, who is there among the present company, who would not gladly drink from those deep fountains of warlike energy and poetic imagination, which have their source in the rich warm peninsula of the Pyrenean mountains?” “You are pleased to speak kindly of us,” said Don Hernandez; “nor, in some respects, are we unworthy of your praise. However, be that as it may, too many dark flowers must spoil the beauty of the wreath. A bright lily, or rose, must now and then be intwined therein; and to such a flower, if I mistake not, may be compared the story which now seems hovering on the lips of the Count de Vinciguerra.” “Spaniards and Italians should doubtless assist each other,” replied the Count; “and, since you desire it, I shall willingly commence my story:--