That Appears To Me The Part Of A Road-Agent Rather Than A
Reformer, And It Seems To Me No Amend For His Service Under Moorish
Princes That He Should Make War Against Them On His Personal Behalf Or
Afterward Under His Own Ungrateful King.
He is friends now with the
Arabian King of Saragossa, and now he defeats the Aragonese under the
Castilian
Sovereign, and again he sends an insulting message by the
Moslems to the Christian Count of Barcelona, whom he takes prisoner with
his followers, but releases without ransom after a contemptuous
audience. Is it well, I ask, that he helps one Moor against another,
always for what there is in it, and when he takes Valencia from the
infidels, keeps none of his promises to them, but having tortured the
governor to make him give up his treasure, buries him to his waist and
then burns him alive? After that, to be sure, he enjoys his declining
years by making forays in the neighboring country, and dies "satisfied
with having done his duty toward his God."
Our interpreter, who would not let us rest till he had shown us the box
holding the Cid's bones, had himself had a varied career. If you
believed him he was born in Madrid and had passed, when three years old,
to New York, where he grew up to become a citizen and be the driver of a
delivery wagon for a large department-store. He duly married an American
woman who could speak not only French, German, and Italian, but also
Chinese, and was now living with him in Burgos.
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