Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 1. Elliot Frances Minto Dickinson

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СКАЧАТЬ by, a poet reciting “How the god of love had wounded the heart of the king,” the Archbishop Opas himself meeting them at the great Puerta, and blessing them as they knelt.

      Jousts, tournaments and banquets, followed; the great chiefs appearing resplendent in burnished armour, embossed and enamelled in the ancient style; nothing was too costly for these delicate descendants of the rudely armed Alaric; carpet knights, all plumes and banners and worked scarfs, glittering in and out of silken tents; and revelry and dances presided over by the king and queen.

      For twenty days princes and knights, assembled from all parts of Spain, kept holiday at Toledo. Every tongue declared the dark-skinned Egilona peerless among queens, and Don Roderich the comeliest of the Gothic race. Egilona was adored by her Christian consort. He turned no more longing eyes upon the venal fair who hitherto had contended for his favour, and the vessel of state glided over a crystal sea to the soft winds of prosperity under a cloudless sky.

      The old lays and ballads make Roderich, in the magnificence of his youth, a rival of the Cid Campeador himself. Even his mortal enemies, the Moors, glorify him in their songs sung to the cither under the orange groves of Granada.

      But already the “cloud no bigger than a man’s hand” is rising on the horizon, by-and-by to obscure and darken the sun of his success.

      A crown acquired by violence sits uneasily on the usurper’s head. Like Witica, Don Roderich was tormented with suspicions of conspiracies and treachery among his powerful nobles. So little did the fate of his ill-starred predecessor teach him wisdom, that he permitted the same fears to haunt him, of all who were allied to him by blood. Witica’s two sons were banished from Spain, and, to avoid the chance of rebellion, such defences in walls and castles as yet remained were thrown down, and the carefully constructed fortifications of the Romans levelled to the earth. Nor could a rude and warlike race be expected to maintain their early valour in the midst of such luxury and licentiousness as prevailed. For two hundred years the Gothic kings had held Spain by the prowess of their arms, and the simple habits of their forefathers – Ataulfo, Sigeric, Theodoric, Alaric, Amalaric, and his successors up to the frugal-minded Wamba, the “Farmer King.”

      Now, under Witica and Roderich, effeminacy and sloth led on to cowardice. The Gothic soldiers who had been galvanised into a temporary show of valour by the recent strife between Witica and Roderich, soon sank back into the inactivity of a wanton court, feasting, dancing, and wassailing in a style more becoming the satraps of an Eastern potentate than the chiefs of a free and generous people. Who could have recognised in these voluptuous youths, who hung about the person of Don Roderich, the descendants of those stern and frugal Teutonic heroes of the North, marching down like thunder-gods to conquer the nations?

      Pomp there was, it is true, and splendour, and civilisation, and an elegance of manners and of thought unknown before; but the heart of the Gothic nation was cankered at the core, and the warlike Moors, ever on the lookout to snatch from their grasp the fertile Peninsula showing out so fair across the Straits, noted it with joy.

      CHAPTER II

      Don Roderich – Gathering of the Chiefs – Trial of Witica

      HOW strange to think of Cordoba before the Moors, who so imbued it with the spirit of Moslem life! Those famous Caliphs of the rival houses of Mirvan and Ummaija, and the great Abdurraman, whose wealth and luxury read like a dream; Eastern luxury in banquets under painted domes; odalisques and white-robed eunuchs gliding beneath fretted arches, vaults of alabaster and porphyry; harems with walls shedding showers of jasmine and rose-leaves, the soft breathings of guzla and cither, dark heads crowned with orient pearls, and tissue-robed Sultanas reclining on golden thrones.

      “Kartuba the important,” the gem of the Carthaginians, – ancient when the Gentiles reigned in the time of Moses; possessed in turn by Greeks and Romans, the birthplace of Seneca, Lucan, Averroës, and El Gran Capitan Gonsalvo Aguilar de Cordoba; for ages the capital of Southern Spain, – is to be considered exclusively, before the advent of the Moors, as a Roman settlement, the grandly regular aspect of these masters of the world impressed upon its buildings. Siding with Pompey in the time of the Republic, it was destroyed by the vengeance of Cæsar. Rebuilt by Marcellus and repeopled by penniless patricians from Rome, it was for a time called “Patricia”; under all names a sober and dignified capital gathered round its ancient castle on the banks of the Guadalquivir.

      At all times Cordoba is beautiful; the verdant slopes of the Sierra Morena, rising precipitously from the very gates, look down serenely on the strife of rival peoples; lovely retreats, dotted with white quintas, farms, mills, vineyards, and olive-grounds; the rugged summits rising westwards to the limits of Lusitania; the lazy Guadalquivir flowing at their base, through grassy plains dark with orange and myrtle.

      Now what a desolation! A solitary shepherd pipes to his flock, as he passes at the Ave Maria, on the lonely road; a file of mules carrying bricks or corn succeed him; a ragged goatherd watches his kids grazing beside the river, and droves of swine burrow in the mould once trodden by the steps of heroes! Two boldly crenelated towers and a portion of the outer walls, rising from an ancient garden of exceeding sweetness, are all that remains of the palace and fortress of the Gothic kings. Thickets of roses and lilacs engulf you as you enter, broad palm leaves shroud decay, and quivering cane-brakes whisper softly of the past. A little to the left rises a lower tower, grey against the sky, another and another, the stones scarcely held together by entwining ropes of ivy – all that remains of the royal castle.

      In the prison beneath, on a level with the Guadalquivir, the noble Theodofredo, father of Roderich, languishes, deprived of sight by red-hot irons held before the eyes, a favourite mode of torture, borrowed, like all that is degraded, from the Byzantines. Now Witica, who commanded this savage act, has taken his place in the same prison, and is to be judged by Theodofredo’s son. Wiser would it be, and more merciful, if Roderich should forego this vengeance. But with power have come the savage instincts of his race. The indulgence of his life has already begun to tell on his once generous nature. Little by little, he has fallen from the high position of regenerator of Spain, and, led on by evil counsel and a natural weakness inherent in his nature, has adopted the same false and cruel principles of government which he was called to the throne to reform.

      Within a broad vaulted hall, the high roof supported by carved rafters, the walls hung with tapestry woven with silver thread – in which the stories of Gothic victories are rudely depicted – Roderich sits on a low silver throne. It is shaped like a shield, in remembrance of the early custom of the nomad chiefs, his ancestors, who, when invested with military command, were three times, standing upon a shield, carried round the camp, on the shoulders of stalwart Goths. A rich mantle of purple brocade covers a lightly wrought cuirass inlaid with gold. The Gothic crown, which has, in the altered manners of the time, come to be not of iron but of gold, set with resplendent jewels, rests upon his head, almost concealed by luxuriant masses of hair, falling on neck and shoulders, in beard and love-locks. His buskins are red, like the Eastern emperors’, and his feet, shod with pearled sandals, rest on an inlaid footstool. The sceptre lies beside him with his sword, and over his head is a raised canopy of cloth of gold, decorated with inscriptions in Runic characters and quaint devices, come down from early times.

      Around are the chiefs and nobles of the nation, gathered from all quarters of Spain – to judge him who lately was their king. All are men of war, habited in the superb but cumbrous armour of the time, before the delicate handling of the Moor turned metal into thin plates of steel, made swords as fine and piercing as needles, and armory a science.

      Nearest to Roderich stands Ataulfo, next in succession to the throne, a generous-hearted youth, full of the old virtues of his nation. With much of the ruddy countenance of the king, he shows his Northern origin in the chestnut locks which escape from his burnished cap, and a certain blond fairness in spite of exposure to a southern sun.

      Teodomir, a veteran general, СКАЧАТЬ