ould
Eve have tempted Adam with an apple?"

"I have always held that as a specially prepared temptation," said the
priest. "They had never eaten anything until then, and the danger lay in
the new experience."

"Monsieur de Nevada, you must go to school again," laughed Countess
Pedro. "Or you are wilfully perverting facts to suit your purpose. I
shall have to inform against you to the Archbishop. We are going to see
him to-morrow morning. Are you not in his jurisdiction?"

"No, madame," replied the priest. "I hold no preferment in the province
of Valencia. This Garden of Spain blooms not for my pleasure. Yet, how
can I say so, for who enjoys it more when fate brings me here?"

"It is indeed the Garden of Spain," said de la Torre. "I often wished we
were as favoured in the neighbourhood of Toledo--though we have little
to complain of."

"Valencia is a land flowing with milk and honey," said de Nevada. "You
must not hope for two Canaans so near each other."

"Tell me," said Madame de la Torre, as she poured out coffee with a
graceful hand, "why this town is called Valencia del Cid. I thought the
Cid had only to do with Burgos. I fear I am exposing my ignorance."

"It would be difficult to know what the Cid had not to do with and where
he did not go," returned de Nevada. "He was a mighty man of valour,
according to his lights: also a great barbarian. In those days we might
all have been the same. In my own mind, I have always likened him to the
English Cromwell; and if Cromwell was in any way better than he, it is
that he lived six centuries later. They were equally determined and
unscrupulous. What a wonderful passage is that in the history of
England! But the Cid had much to do with Valencia. He came here in 1094,
and after a siege of twenty months took the town. It is remarkable how
retribution follows a man, as surely as shadow follows the substance.
'Be sure your sin will find you out.' Never was truer proverb What says
Shakespeare?" continued the priest, turning to us:

"'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
The fateful shadows that hang by us still.'

"I don't know that I quote correctly, and my English is barbarous," he
laughed. "Never could I master that fine language; perhaps for the
reason that I never dwelt long enough in your country. Few and short
have my visits been. It was in 1095 that the Cid took Valencia. Ibn
Jehaf the murderer was on the throne, having killed Yahya, whom Alonso
VI.