These direful portents must surely have prepared Roderic for treachery, conspiracies, and unpleasantness of all kinds. But when Count Julian arrived, smiling and deferential, to take his daughter home to Ceuta, he seems to have suspected nothing, feared nothing. The rest of the story--Julian’s invitation to the Moors, the rout of Guadalete, the disappearance of Roderic--relates to the history of Spain generally, not to that of Toledo. Dozy believes that Julian actually existed, but he seems to have been a Byzantine governor of Ceuta, not a Spaniard. It is hardly necessary to say that Florinda is as much a figment of the imagination as the enchanted tower. Yet near the Puente de San Martin (above which never king’s palace stood) some fragments of masonry are pointed out as the Baños de la Cava (Florinda’s Bath). They are, in reality, but the remains of a Moorish tomb. In July 711, King Roderic set out from Toledo, never to return. Upon the news of the rout of Guadalete, all the magnates and prelates abandoned the city. Its surrender to the Moorish host of the one-eyed Tarik was the work of the Jews, who had not forgotten the persecutions of Sisebert and Egica. There were Jews in the invading army under the command of Kaula-al-Yahudi. When Tarik appeared before the walls, a venerable Israelite was let down in a basket, and, approaching him, offered to admit him to the city if liberty and the free exercise of their religion were guaranteed to his race. The Berber joyfully accepted these terms, and on the following day proud Toledo--deserted by its Christian inhabitants--was annexed to the Saracen Khalifate. TOLEDO UNDER THE MOOR Never again was Toledo to attain to the wealth and splendour it possessed under Wamba and his successors. The invaders, fresh from the conquest of the richest provinces of Africa, were dazzled by the magnificence of the spoils that fell to them in the dark-browed city above the Tagus. The Arabian historians have need of all their powers of hyperbole to over-estimate the richness of the treasure. There was enough and to spare, Al Leyth Ibn Saïd tells us, for every soldier in the army. The humblest troopers might have been seen staggering under the weight of priceless silks and garments, chains of gold, and strings of precious stones. The rude Berbers, fresh from their mountains, but ill appreciated the value of the loot, and cut the costliest fabrics in two or more pieces to adjust their shares. A magnificent carpet, composed of superb embroidery, interwoven with gold and ornamented with filigree work, and profusely set with gems, is said to have been treated in this way by the troopers into whose greedy hands it fell. It would be interesting to learn the place of manufacture of this carpet, for from the silence of St. Isidore upon the subject of textile fabrics, it would seem that they were not made in his time in Spain.