The Hispano-Goths, as Catholics, evinced a fanatical and intolerant temper which had been conspicuously lacking in them as Arians. Harsh edicts continued to be promulgated against the Jews--then, as till a much later date, a most important element in the population of Toledo. The unlucky Children of Israel may have derived in the intervals of persecution some malicious consolation from the bitter quarrels between the king and the Catholic clergy. Witica was an enemy, or what was probably regarded as the same thing, a would-be reformer of the Church. To his impiety, indeed, monkish writers are fond of ascribing the destruction of the Gothic kingdom. His predecessor, Egica, did not hesitate to condemn to excommunication, exile, and confiscation of property, Sisebert, the powerful Archbishop of Toledo. Perhaps some clerkly chronicler, by way of retaliation for this outrage upon his order, invented the following discreditable story, to be found in the pages of Lozano. King Egica had conceived an ardent passion for the beautiful Doña Luz, who is described as the grand-daughter of Kindaswinth, and the sister of Roderic, afterwards king. Her love, however, was given to her uncle, Don Favila, Duke or Governor of Cantabria. The lovers, wearied at last by the king’s opposition to their union, went through a secret and simplified form of marriage in the lady’s bedchamber before a statue of the Virgin. In the course of time. Doña Luz became a mother. Egica’s suspicions had already been enkindled, and fearing his wrath, she placed the new-born infant in a little ark and set it afloat on the bosom of the Tagus. As her maids pushed out the tiny craft from the foot of the steep path that leads down from Toledo, a radiance diffused itself around the sleeping child and for long marked his passage down the broad stream. The irate monarch, divining that Doña Luz must in some way have disposed of her child, caused a census to be taken of all the children born in and around the city within the past three months with the names of the respective fathers. The number of births was recorded at 35,428--a very surprising total for Toledo! And, which is still more remarkable and highly creditable to the city, the parentage of these numerous infants was in every case authenticated. What then had become of Doña Luz’s baby? Baffled in his quest, the king suborned one of his minions, Melias by name, to accuse the unfortunate lady of incontinency. The penalty for this offence, we are told, was nothing less than death by fire; and for that fate Egica bade Doña Luz prepare, unless she could secure a defender or otherwise clear her reputation. At the eleventh hour, the valorous champion appeared in the person of Don Favila, who disproved the charge made against his lady-love to the satisfaction of mediæval intelligences, by the simple method of running her accuser through the body. This, however, did not satisfy the sceptical monarch, who insisted on a further ordeal by combat.