The gorgeous simplicity of the original is missed by Lockhart in the succeeding verses, in which the Cid, before giving up the horse, mounts him to show his worth, his ermine mantle hanging from his shoulders. He will do, he says, in the presence of the king what he has not done for long except in battle with the Moor: he will touch Bavieca with his spurs. Then comes the maddest, wildest, yet most accomplished display of noble horsemanship that ever witched the world. One rein breaks and the beholders tremble for his life, but with ease and grace he guides the foaming and panting horse before the king and prepares to yield him up. Then Alfonso cries, God forbid that he should take him: he shall be accounted, indeed, as his, but shameful would it be “That peerless Bavieca should ever be bestrid By any mortal but Bivar—‘Mount, mount again, my Cid!’” There is a spot in Spain where we still seem to breathe the very air of chivalrous romance: the royal armoury at Madrid, in which the mail-clad knights with their plumes, their housings, their lances, their trophies, sit their fine horses as gallantly as if they were riding straight into the lists. There, and there alone, we can invoke the proper _mise en scène_ for the gestes and jousts described in the Spanish ballads. Historically, it seems certain that the Cid died at Valencia in July, 1099, an access of grief that his captains—who, owing to his ill-health, were obliged to replace him—had failed to hold the Moors in check. King Alfonso came to the assistance of his noble widow, Jimena, but finally Valencia had to be abandoned; all the Christians left the town and the Cid’s body was borne to his distant Northern home. Such is the historical outline, sufficiently pathetic in itself but adorned with additions, not all of them, perhaps, invented in the sublime legend of the Last Ride. It is said that the Cid, knowing that his last hour was near, refrained from any food except certain draughts of rose-water in which were dissolved the myrrh and balsam sent to him by the great Sultan of Persia. He gave particular instructions as to how his body was to be anointed with the myrrh and balsam which remained in the golden caskets, and how it was to be set upright on Bavieca, fully saddled and armed, to be still a terror to the Moors, who were to be kept in complete ignorance of his death. All this was done and a great victory was won over the Moors, who thought they saw their dreaded enemy once more commanding in person. Then the victors started on the long journey to San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, the Cid riding his horse by day, supported by an artful contrivance, and by night placed on a dummy horse wrought by Gil Diaz, his devoted servitor. Jimena, with all the Cid’s men, followed in his train. On the way the procession is joined by the Cid’s two daughters and by a great mass of people who mourned in their hearts for Spain’s greatest hero, but they wore rich and gay apparel,