🧚 Legend of Count Julian and His Family.

In the preceding legends is darkly shadowed out a true story of the woes of Spain.1 It is a story full of wholesome admonition, rebuking the insolence of human pride, and the vanity of human ambition, and showing the futility of all greatness that is not strongly based on virtue.2 We have seen, in brief space of time, most of the actors in this historic drama disappearing, one by one, from the scene, and going down, conqueror and conquered, to gloomy and unhonoured graves.3 It remains to close this eventful history, by holding up as a signal warning the fate of the traitor, whose perfidious scheme of vengeance brought ruin on his native land.4

Many and various are the accounts given in ancient chronicles of the fortunes of Count Julian and his family; and many are the traditions on the subject still extant among the populace of Spain, and perpetuated in those countless ballads sung by peasants and muleteers, which spread a singular charm over the whole of this romantic land.5

He who has travelled in Spain in the true way in which the country ought to be travelled; sojourning in its remote provinces; rambling among the rugged defiles and secluded valleys of its mountains; and making himself familiar with the people in their out-of-the-way hamlets, and rarely visited neighbourhoods, will remember many a group of travellers and muleteers, gathered of an evening around the door or the spacious hearth of a mountain venta, wrapped in their brown cloaks, and listening with grave and profound attention to the long historic ballad of some rustic troubadour, either recited with the true _ore rotundo_ and modulated cadences of Spanish elocution, or chanted to the tinkling of a guitar.6 In this way, he may have heard the doleful end of Count Julian and his family recounted in traditionary rhymes, that have been handed down from generation to generation.7 The particulars, however, of the following wild legend are chiefly gathered from the writings of the pseudo Moor, Rasis: how far they may be safely taken as historic facts, it is impossible now to ascertain; we must content ourselves, therefore, with their answering to the exactions of poetic justice.8

As yet every thing had prospered with Count Julian.9 He had gratified his vengeance; he had been successful in his treason, and had acquired countless riches from the ruin of his country.10 But it is not outward success that constitutes prosperity.11 The tree flourishes with fruit and foliage while blasted and withering at the heart.12 Wherever he went, Count Julian read hatred in every eye.13 The Christians cursed him as the cause of all their woe; the Moslems despised and distrusted him as a traitor.14 Men whispered together as he approached, and then turned away in scorn; and mothers snatched away their children with horror if he offered to caress them.15 He withered under the execration of his fellow men; and last, and worst of all, he began to loathe himself.16 He tried in vain to persuade himself that he had but taken a justifiable vengeance: he felt that no personal wrong can justify the crime of treason to one’s country.17

For a time, he sought in luxurious indulgence to soothe, or forget, the miseries of the mind.18 He assembled round him every pleasure and gratification that boundless wealth could purchase; but all in vain.19 He had no relish for the dainties of his board; music had no charm wherewith to lull his soul, and remorse drove slumber from his pillow.20 He sent to Ceuta for his wife Frandina, his daughter Florinda, and his youthful son Alarbot; hoping in the bosom of his family to find that sympathy and kindness which he could no longer meet with in the world.21 Their presence, however, brought him no alleviation.22 Florinda, the daughter of his heart, for whose sake he had undertaken this signal vengeance, was sinking a victim to its effects.23 Wherever she went, she found herself a bye-word of shame and reproach.24 The outrage she had suffered was imputed to her as wantonness, and her calamity was magnified into a crime.25 The Christians never mentioned her name without a curse, and the Moslems, the gainers by her misfortune, spake of her only by the appellation of Cava, the vilest epithet they could apply to woman.26

But the opprobrium of the world was nothing to the upbraiding of her own heart.27 She charged herself with all the miseries of these disastrous wars; the deaths of so many gallant cavaliers; the conquest and perdition of her country.28 The anguish of her mind preyed upon the beauty of her person.29 Her eye, once soft and tender in its expression, became wild and haggard; her cheek lost its bloom, and became hollow and pallid; and at times there was desperation in her words.30 When her father sought to embrace her, she withdrew with shuddering from his arms; for she thought of his treason, and the ruin it had brought upon Spain.31 Her wretchedness increased after her return to her native country, until it rose to a degree of frenzy.32 One day when she was walking with her parents in the garden of their palace, she entered a tower, and, having barred the door, ascended to the battlements.33 From thence she called to them in piercing accents, expressive of her insupportable anguish and desperate determination.34 “Let this city,” said she, “be henceforth called Malacca, in memorial of the most wretched of women, who therein put an end to her days.”35 So saying, she threw herself headlong from the tower, and was dashed to pieces.36 The city, adds the ancient chronicler, received the name thus given it, though afterwards softened to Malaga, which it still retains, in memory of the tragical end of Florinda.37

The Countess Frandina abandoned this scene of woe, and returned to Ceuta, accompanied by her infant son.38 She took with her the remains of her unfortunate daughter, and gave them honourable sepulture in a mausoleum of the chapel belonging to the citadel.39 Count Julian departed for Carthagena, where he remained plunged in horror at this doleful event.40

About this time, the cruel Suleiman, having destroyed the family of Muza, had sent an Arab general, named Alahor, to succeed Abdalasis as emir or governor of Spain.41 The new emir was of a cruel and suspicious nature, and commenced his sway with a stern severity that soon made those under his command look back with regret to the easy rule of Abdalasis.42 He regarded with an eye of distrust the renegado Christians who had aided in the conquest, and who bore arms in the service of the Moslems; but his deepest suspicions fell upon Count Julian.43 “He has been a traitor to his own countrymen,” said he: “how can we be sure that he will not prove traitor to us?”44

A sudden insurrection of the Christians who had taken refuge in the Asturian mountains quickened his suspicions, and inspired him with fears of some dangerous conspiracy against his power.45 In the height of his anxiety, he bethought him of an Arabian sage named Yuza, who had accompanied him from Africa.46 This son of science was withered in form, and looked as if he had outlived the usual term of mortal life.47 In the course of his studies and travels in the East, he had collected the knowledge and experience of ages; being skilled in astrology and, it is said, in necromancy, and possessing the marvellous gift of prophecy or divination.48 To this expounder of mysteries Alahor applied, to learn whether any secret treason menaced his safety.49

The astrologer listened with deep attention and overwhelming brow to all the surmises and suspicions of the emir; then shut himself up to consult his books, and commune with those supernatural intelligences subservient to his wisdom.50 At an appointed hour, the emir sought him in his cell.51 It was filled with the smoke of perfumes: squares and circles and various diagrams were described upon the floor; and the astrologer was poring over a scroll of parchment covered with cabalistic characters.52 He received Alahor with a gloomy and sinister aspect; pretending to have discovered fearful portents in the heavens, and to have had strange dreams and mystic visions.53

“O emir,” said he, “be on your guard!54 Treason is around you, and in your path: your life is in peril.55 Beware of Count Julian and his family.”56

“Enough,” said the emir.57 “They shall all die!58 Parents and children—all shall die!”59

He forthwith sent a summons to Count Julian to attend him in Cordova.60 The messenger found him plunged in affliction for the recent death of his daughter.61 The count excused himself, on account of this misfortune, from obeying the commands of the emir in person, but sent several of his adherents.62 His hesitation, and the circumstance of his having sent his family across the straits to Africa, were construed by the jealous mind of the emir into proofs of guilt.63 He no longer doubted his being concerned in the recent insurrections, and that he had sent his family away, preparatory to an attempt, by force of arms, to subvert the Moslem domination.64 In his fury, he put to death Siseburto and Evan, the nephews of Bishop Oppas, and sons of the former king, Witiza, suspecting them of taking part in the treason.65 Thus did they expiate their treachery to their country in the fatal battle of the Gaudalete.66

Alahor next hastened to Carthagena, to seize upon Count Julian.67 So rapid were his movements that the count had barely time to escape with fifteen cavaliers, with whom he took refuge in the strong castle of Marcuello, among the mountains of Arragon.68 The emir, enraged to be disappointed of his prey, embarked at Carthagena, and crossed the straits to Ceuta, to make captives of the Countess Frandina and her son.69

The old chronicle from which we take this part of our legend presents a gloomy picture of the countess in the stern fortress to which she had fled for refuge; a picture heightened by supernatural horrors.70 These latter the sagacious reader will admit or reject, according to the measure of his faith and judgment; always remembering, that in dark and eventful times, like those in question, involving the destinies of nations, the downfall of kingdoms, and the crimes of rulers and mighty men, the hand of fate is sometimes strangely visible, and confounds the wisdom of the worldly wise, by intimations and portents above the ordinary course of things.71 With this proviso, we make no scruple to follow the venerable chronicler in his narration.72

Now so it happened, that the Countess Frandina was seated late at night in her chamber in the city of Ceuta, which stands on a lofty rock, overlooking the sea.73 She was revolving, in gloomy thought, the late disasters of her family, when she heard a mournful noise, like that of the sea breeze, moaning about the castle walls.74 Raising her eyes, she beheld her brother, the Bishop Oppas, at the entrance of the chamber.75 She advanced to embrace him, but he forbade her with a motion of his hand; and she observed that he was ghastly pale, and that his eyes glared as with lambent flames.76

“Touch me not, sister,” said he with a mournful voice, “lest thou be consumed by the fire which rages within me.77 Guard well thy son, for blood-hounds are upon his track.78 His innocence might have secured him the protection of Heaven, but our crimes have involved him in our common ruin.”79 He ceased to speak, and was no longer to be seen.80 His coming and going were alike without noise, and the door of the chamber remained fast bolted.81

On the following morning, a messenger arrived with tidings that the Bishop Oppas had been made prisoner in battle by the insurgent Christians of the Asturias, and had died in fetters in a tower of the mountains.82 The same messenger brought word that the Emir Alahor had put to death several of the friends of Count Julian; had obliged him to fly for his life to a castle in Arragon; and was embarking with a formidable force for Ceuta.83