"Thou knowest well, señora, he said before he went, To parting from each other our love doth not consent; But love and joyance never may stand in duty's way, And when the king commandeth the noble must obey. Now let discretion guide thee, thou art of worthy name; While I am parted from thee, let none in thee find blame. Employ thy hours full wisely, and tend thy household well, Be never slothful, woe and death with idleness do dwell. Lay by thy costly dresses until I come again. For in the husband's absence let wives in dress be plain; And look well to thy daughters, nor let them be aware. _Lest they comprehend the danger because they see thy care, And lose unconscious innocence. At home they must abide, For the safety of the daughter is at the mother's side_. Be serious with thy servants, with strangers on thy guard, With friends be kind and friendly, and well thy household ward, To no one show my letters, thy best friends may not see. Lest reading them they also may guess of thine to me. And if good news they bring thee, and woman-like dost seek The sympathy of others, with thy daughters only speak. * * * Farewell, farewell, Jimena, the trumpet's call I hear! One last embrace, and then he mounts the steed without a peer." The touch of paternal solicitude and prudence in the passage we have put in italics is so apparently modern, that it can scarcely fail to be a source of surprise, coming as it does from that crude period at the end of the Twelfth Century when such minute psychological observation as to young folks' ways would be little expected, and least of all in the rough warrior {173} hero or his poet creator, whose notions of right and wrong are, to judge from many passages of the poem, so much coarser than those of our time.