ddle, and so you shall lead me forth
to my last fight with the Moors. Ximena my wife will care for Babieca,
and when he is dead she will bury him where no Moorish dogs may root up
his grave. And let no women be hired to make mourning for me. I want no
tears to be shed over me but the tears of Ximena my wife. But for the
Christians in this city, well know I that they are too few men to
conquer the Moors, therefore let them prepare their goods, and steal
forth by night, and take refuge in Castile. So farewell to you all, and
pray that God may have mercy on my soul.'

Thus the Cid died, and all was done as he had said, and the king put
rich garments on him, and set Tizona in his hand, and seated him in a
carved chair by the altar of San Pedro de Cardena.

[_El Romanzo del Cid._]

THE KNIGHT OF THE SORROWFUL COUNTENANCE

Everybody knows that in the old times, when Arthur was king or Charles
the Great emperor, no gentleman ever rested content until he had
received the honour of knighthood. When once he was made a knight, he
left his home and the court, and rode off in search of adventures,
seeking to help people in distress who had no one else to help them.

After a while, however, the knights grew selfish and lazy. They liked
better to hunt the deer through the forest than wicked robbers who had
carried off beautiful ladies. 'It was the king's business,' they said,
'to take care of his subjects, not theirs,' so they dwelt in their own
castles, and many of them became great lords almost as powerful as the
king himself.

But though the knights no longer went in search of noble adventures, as
knights of earlier days had been wont to do, there were plenty of books
in which they could read if they chose of the wonderful deeds of their
forefathers. Lancelot and Roland, Bernardo del Carpio, the Cid, Amadis
de Gaule, and many more, were as well known to them as their own
brothers, and if we will only take the trouble they may be known to us
too.

Now, several hundreds of years after Lancelot and Roland and all the
rest had been laid in their graves, a baby belonging to the family of
Quixada was born in that part of Spain called La Mancha. We are not told
anything of his boyhood, or even of his manhood till he reached the age
of fifty, but we know that he was poor; that he lived with a housekeeper
and a niece to take care of him, and that he passed all his days in
company with these old books until the courts and for