as prosperous; a free city
possessing its own charters, seat of the Assizes, owning a mint. But of
the old Roman city all traces have disappeared. It was one of the first
cities to renounce Paganism. Aurelios Prudentius the first Christian
poet was born here in the year 348. Christianity was then the keynote
of its life, and martyrs died for the faith. Now it is given up to the
worship of the Virgin almost more than any town in Spain. In the eighth
century it fell under the dominion of the Moors, who kept it until the
twelfth century. Then came Alonso the Warrior, who captured it after a
desperate siege of five years, when the people had most of them
perished from hunger: one of the most determined resistances in the
history of the world.

It passed through many vicissitudes as the centuries rolled on. Then in
1808 came the French, who without taking the town managed to leave it
almost in ruins. Then came the attack under Napoleon's four generals,
and Zaragoza resisted them single-handed for sixty-two days of terrible
struggle, combined with plague and famine. All Spain looked on and did
nothing to relieve it. It fell in 1809. Since that time it has had a
peaceful return to prosperity.

Many of the ancient outlines and splendours of the city had disappeared
in the "heap of ruins" left by the French. A new element arose, and as
we walked towards our rambling old inn, with its thousand-and-one
passages, we thought them painfully evident. At the inn we took up our
guide, who escorted us through many streets and turnings to the Plaza
del Portillo, where stood the ancient west gate of the city.

It was on this very spot that occurred the romantic episode of Augustina
the Fair Maid of Zaragoza; a Spanish Joan of Arc on a small scale.

In the terrible siege to which the city was to succumb, Augustina was
fighting on the walls side by side with her devoted lover. She watched
him fall, death-stricken, then took the match from his loosening hand
and worked the gun herself. Determined to avenge her lover, it is said
that she fought long and desperately and with more fatal execution than
any two artillerymen. But we all know the story by heart; and how,
though courting death, she escaped all dangers.

Not to see this romantic spot were we here, but the Aljaferia, just
beyond the gate, in some measure by far the most interesting secular
building in Zaragoza. This was the ancient palace of the Moorish kings,
and still possesses