ent it becomes apparent that
the French admonition _Cherchez la femme_ contains the truth, unalloyed.
In America it has become the custom to say that in every great national
emergency there is always a man ready to meet the situation and meet it
nobly and with understanding; and what can be said here can be said with
equal truth perhaps in other countries of the world, but to this
statement it may be well to add that women also may be found to do nobly
the tasks which may fall to their lot.

In every day and generation, however, it will rarely be found that the
women are better than the men. The interests of men and women are so
identical from so many points of view, society is in so many ways but a
composite of their common interests, that their moral level must of
necessity be the same. By intuition, then, by inherent capacity, by
woman's wit, by that something feminine which is at once the power and
the charm of a woman, the members of this so-called weaker sex have been
able to take their place worthily beside their brothers in the open
field of the world's activities whenever circumstance has called them
forth, without the inheritance, the education, or the experience which
the men possess, but morally they can but be as society makes them.
There are exceptions to all rules, however; some women as well as some
men may be better or worse than the majority of their fellows, and these
are the ones who are signalled out by the historian for special
attention. The people who are always good and always happy have no
history, as there is nothing noteworthy to tell of them, life has no
tragedies, all is plain sailing, and the whole story can be told in a
few words. In a measure the same thing is true of the ordinary man, be
he good or bad, for what can be said of him can be said of a whole
class, and so the history of the class may be told, but the individual
will always remain in the background.

In the special epoch of Spanish history with which the present chapter
is concerned, the twelfth century and the first part of the thirteenth,
there is little to say of women in general which cannot be said of the
mediaeval women of other parts of Europe. Oriental ideas had been
introduced to some extent, it is true, by the Moors, but otherwise the
general ignorance and dependence of the women of the time call for no
special comment. Above this commonplace level there are to be seen,
nevertheless, two women who occupied a comman