to court to learn the meaning of all these wild doings, and, on passing through his niece's room, on his way to the queen's chamber, recognised a handkerchief which resembled those folded round the infant of the ark he had picked up on the banks of the Tagus at Alcantara. Questioning his niece, he discovered the nature of her relations with Favila, and instantly insisted on their marriage. The king was still bent on another duel, and sent Longaris to fight Favila about the sword, when a hermit comes to court and, in the name of heaven, stops the duel by revealing, as a divine message from above, the secret loves of Doña Luz and Don Favila. Both the cavaliers were wounded, and Doña Luz flung herself on her knees before the king and begged for mercy for her lover. After long hesitation, impelled by the hermit's command from heaven to accept the inevitable, Egica gives in, signals the end of the third duel against Doña Luz's happiness, and permits, gracelessly of course, after Favila's recovery, his public marriage with the thrice unfortunate Doña Luz. He and the queen were witnesses, and Grafeses, a kind of _deus ex machina_, proclaimed the infante Childe Pelayo, the future hero and victor of Covadonga. Egica's other feat was to persecute anew the Jews for an imaginary conspiracy to convert Spain into a Hebrew kingdom. He pronounced them slaves, took their children from them, and forebade them to intermarry. Two figures stand out in this prolonged and monotonous legend in exaggerated, it may even be said, in false relief. Witiza and Rodrigo are charged with the ruin of the Toledan kingdom. No less than four archbishops, in no moderate language, have recorded the tale of Witiza's iniquities, Sebastian of Salamanca, Isidor Pacense, Lucas of Tuy, and Rodrigo of Toledo. None of these writers were contemporaries of Witiza, and they wrote in days when research was nigh impossible, and when we may doubt if a premium was put upon accuracy. How much even of our own history is a matter of hearsay? and does there exist a man so fortressed by virtue as to live without the range of slander if he be so unfortunate as to excite enmity or jealousy; above all, if he tread on the susceptible toes of prejudice? This is what Witiza precisely did. And the prejudice he wounded was ecclesiastical, and ecclesiastical rancour we know at all times has proved the bitterest man can provoke.