Every circumstance of this story is corroborated, as far as is possible in the present time, by the position of the localities, the known customs of the period, and the character of King Roderick. But the historian Mariana, to show the minuteness and triumph of research, on which he has founded his relation, quotes the young lady's own version of the affair; in fact, no less interesting a document than her letter to her father, then in Africa, disclosing the insult offered to the family. The following is the translation of this portentous dispatch. A _billet-doux_ pregnant with greater events never issued from the boudoir of beauty and innocence. "Would to Heaven, my lord and father!--Would to Heaven the earth had closed over me, before it fell to my lot to write these lines, and with such grievous news to cause you sadness and perpetual regret! How many are the tears that flow while I am writing, these blots and erasures are witnesses. And yet if I do not immediately, I shall cause a suspicion that not only the body has been polluted, but the soul likewise blotted and stained with perpetual infamy. Would I could foresee a term to our misery!--Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? I blush to write that which I am bound to divulge. O wretched and miserable fate! In a word, your daughter--your blood, that of the kingly line of the Goths, has suffered from King Rodrigo,--to whose care, alas! she was entrusted like the sheep to the wolf,--a most wicked and cruel affront. It is for you, if you are worthy the name of a man, to cause the sweet draught of our ruin to become a deadly poison to his life; nor to leave unpunished the mockery and insult he has cast on our line and on our house." Don Julian, who, as some say, was of royal descent, and a relative, not far removed, of Roderick--was possessed of qualities no less marked by daring than artifice. His plans well digested, he committed his government in Africa to the charge of a deputy, and repaired to the court at Toledo. There he made it his business to advance in credit and favour until the moment should arrive for action. His first step was, by means of false alarms of attacks meditated on the northern frontier, to get rid of the principal part of the disposable forces in that direction. Meanwhile he caused a letter from his Countess, who remained in Africa, to be forwarded to the King, in which, on the plea of serious illness, she urgently entreats the royal permission for the departure of Florinda to Ceuta. It is related that the profligate Rodrigo consented to the journey with so much the better grace, that possession had divested the attractions of his victim of all further hold of his passions, already under the dominion of new allurements.