 | The Crayon miscellany |  |
LEGEND OF
COUNT JULIAN AND HIS FAMILY.
In the preceding legends is darkly shadowed
out a true story of the woes of Spain. 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.
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. 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.
Many and various are the accounts given in
ancient chronicles of the fortunes of Count Julian
and his family, and many are the traditions
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.
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
chaunted to the tinkling of a guitar. 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. 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
with their answering to the exactions of poetic
justice.
As yet every thing had prospered with Count
Julian. He had gratified his vengeance; he had
been successful in his treason, and had acquired
countless riches from the ruin of his country.
But it is not outward success that constitutes
prosperity. The tree flourishes with fruit and
foliage while blasted and withering at the heart.
Wherever he went, Count Julian read hatred in
every eye. The christians cursed him as the
cause of all their woe; the moslems despised
and distrusted him as a traitor. 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. He withered under the execration of
his fellow men, and, last, and worst of all, he
began to loathe himself. 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.
For a time, he sought in luxurious indulgence
to soothe or forget the miseries of the mind.
He assembled round him every pleasure and
gratification that boundless wealth could purchase,
but all in vain. He had no relish for the
dainties of his board; music had no charm
slumber from his pillow. 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. Their presence, however, brought him
no alleviation. Florinda, the daughter of his
heart, for whose sake he had undertaken this
signal vengeance, was sinking a victim to its
effects. Wherever she went, she found herself
a bye-word of shame and reproach. The outrage
she had suffered was imputed to her as
wantonness, and her calamity was magnified into
a crime. 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.
But the opprobrium of the world was nothing
to the upbraiding of her own heart. 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. The anguish of her mind preyed
upon the beauty of her person. 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
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.
Her wretchedness increased after her return to
her native country, until it rose to a degree of
frenzy. 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. From thence she
called to them in piercing accents, expressive of
her insupportable anguish and desperate determination.
“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.” So saying, she threw herself headlong
from the tower and was dashed to pieces.
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.
The Countess Frandina abandoned this scene
of woe, and returned to Ceuta, accompanied
by her infant son. 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. Count Julian
departed for Carthagena, where he remained
plunged in horror at this doleful event.
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. 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. 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.
“He has been a traitor to his own countrymen,”
said he, “how can we be sure that he
will not prove traitor to us?”
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. In the height of his anxiety, he bethought
him of an Arabian sage named Yuza,
who had accompanied him from Africa. This
son of science was withered in form, and looked
as if he had outlived the usual term of mortal
life. 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.
learn whether any secret treason menaced his
safety.
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.
At an appointed hour the emir sought him
in his cell. 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. 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.
“O emir,” said he, “be on your guard! treason
is around you and in your path; your life is
in peril. Beware of Count Julian and his family.”
“Enough,” said the emir. “They shall all die!
Parents and children—all shall die!”
He forthwith sent a summons to Count Julian
to attend him in Cordova. The messenger found
him plunged in affliction for the recent death of
his daughter. The count excused himself, on
account of this misfortune, from obeying the
commands of the emir in person, but sent several
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. 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. 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. Thus did they expiate their
treachery to their country in the fatal battle of
the Guadalete.
Alahor next hastened to Carthagena to seize
upon Count Julian. 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. 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.
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. These latter, the sagacious
reader will admit or reject according to the
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.
With this proviso, we make no scruple to follow
the venerable chronicler in his narration.
Now so it happened, that the countess Frandina
was seated late at night in her chamber in
the citadel of Ceuta, which stands on a lofty
rock, overlooking the sea. 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.
Raising her eyes, she beheld her brother, the
Bishop Oppas, at the entrance of the chamber.
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.
“Touch me not, sister,” said he, with a mournful
voice, “lest thou be consumed by the fire
which rages within me. Guard well thy son,
for blood hounds are upon his track. His innocence
might have secured him the protection of
heaven, but our crimes have involved him in our
longer to be seen. His coming and going were
alike without noise, and the door of the chamber
remained fast bolted.
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. 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.
The Countess Frandina, as has already been
shown, was of courageous heart, and danger
made her desperate. There were fifty moorish
soldiers in the garrison; she feared that they
would prove treacherous, and take part with
their countrymen. Summoning her officers,
therefore, she informed them of their danger,
and, commanded them to put those Moors to
death. The guards sallied forth to obey her
orders. Thirty-five of the Moors were in the
great square, unsuspicious of any danger, when
they were severally singled out by their executioners,
and at a concerted signal, killed on the
spot. The remaining fifteen took refuge in a
tower. They saw the armada of the emir at a
its arrival. The soldiers of the countess saw it also,
and made extraordinary efforts to destroy these
internal enemies before they should be attacked
from without. They made repeated attempts to
storm the tower, but were as often repulsed with
severe loss. They then undermined it, supporting
its foundations by stanchions of wood. To
these they set fire and withdrew to a distance,
keeping up a constant shower of missiles to prevent
the Moors from sallying forth to extinguish
the flames. The stanchions were rapidly consumed,
and when they gave way the tower fell to
the ground. Some of the Moors were crushed
among the ruins; others were flung to a distance
and dashed among the rocks; those who survived
were instantly put to the sword.
The fleet of the emir arrived at Ceuta about
the hour of vespers. He landed, but found the
gates closed against him. The countess herself
spoke to him from a tower, and set him at defiance.
The emir immediately laid siege to the
city. He consulted the astrologer Yuza, who told
him that, for seven days his star would have the
ascendant over that of the youth Alarbot, but after
that time the youth would be safe from his
power, and would effect his ruin.
Alahor immediately ordered the city to be assailed
on every side, and at length carried it by
in the citadel and made desperate defence, but
the walls were sapped and mined, and she saw
that all resistance would soon be unavailing. Her
only thoughts now were to conceal her child.
“Surely,” said she, “they will not think of seeking
him among the dead.” She led him therefore into
the dark and dismal chapel. “Thou art not afraid
to be alone in this darkness, my child,” said she.
“No, mother,” replied the boy, “darkness gives
silence and sleep.” She conducted him to the
tomb of Florinda. “Fearest thou the dead, my
child?” “No mother, the dead can do no harm,
and what should I fear from my sister?”
The countess opened the sepulchre. “Listen,
my son,” said she. “There are fierce and cruel
people who have come hither to murder thee.
Stay here in company with thy sister, and be quiet
as thou dost value thy life!” The boy, who was
of a courageous nature, did as he was bidden, and
remained there all that day, and all the night, and
the next day until the third hour.
In the mean time the walls of the citadel were
sapped, the troops of the emir poured in at the
breach, and a great part of the garrison was put
to the sword. The countess was taken prisoner
and brought before the emir. She appeared in
his presence with a haughty demeanour, as if she
had been a queen receiving homage; but when
pale, and replied, “My son is with the dead.”
“Countess,” said the emir, “I am not to be deceived;
tell me where you have concealed the
boy, or tortures shall wring from you the secret.”
“Emir,” replied the countess, “may the greatest
torments be my portion, both here and hereafter,
if what I speak be not the truth. My darling
child lies buried with the dead.”
The emir was confounded by the solemnity of
her words; but the withered astrologer Yuza,
who stood by his side regarding the countess
from beneath his bushed eyebrows, perceived
trouble in her countenance and equivocation in
her words. “Leave this matter to me,” whispered
he to Alahor, “I will produce the child.”
He ordered strict search to be made by the
soldiery, and he obliged the countess to be always
present. When they came to the chapel,
her cheek turned pale and her lip quivered.
“This,” said the subtile astrologer, “is the place
of concealment!”
The search throughout the chapel, however,
was equally vain, and the soldiers were about to
depart, when Yuza remarked a slight gleam of
joy in the eye of the countess. “We are leaving
our prey behind,” thought he, “the countess is
exulting.”
He now called to mind the words of her asseveration,
Turning suddenly to the soldiers he ordered them
to search the sepulchres. “If you find him not,”
said he “drag forth the bones of that wanton
Cava, that they may be burnt, and the ashes scattered
to the winds.”
The soldiers searched among the tombs and
found that of Florinda partly open. Within lay
the boy in the sound sleep of childhood, and one
of the soldiers took him gently in his arms to bear
him to the emir.
When the countess beheld that her child was
discovered, she rushed into the presence of Alahor,
and, forgetting all her pride, threw herself
upon her knees before him.
“Mercy! mercy!” cried she in piercing accents,
“mercy on my son—my only child! O emir!
listen to a mother's prayer, and my lips shall kiss
thy feet. As thou art merciful to him so may the
most high God have mercy upon thee, and heap
blessings on thy head.”
“Bear that frantic woman hence,” said the
emir, “but guard her well.”
The countess was dragged away by the soldiery
without regard to her struggles and her
cries, and confined in a dungeon of the citadel.
The child was now brought to the emir. He
had been awakened by the tumult, but gazed
fearlessly on the stern countenances of the soldiers.
of pity, it would have been touched by the tender
youth and innocent beauty of the child; but
his heart was as the nether millstone, and he was
bent upon the destruction of the whole family of
Julian. Calling to him the astrologer, he gave
the child into his charge with a secret command.
The withered son of the desert took the boy by
the hand, and led him up the winding stair-case
of a tower. When they reached the summit
Yuza placed him on the battlements.
“Cling not to me, my child,” said he, “there
is no danger.” “Father, I fear not,” said the
undaunted boy, “yet it is a wondrous height!”
The child looked around with delighted eyes.
The breeze blew his curling locks from about
his face, and his cheek glowed at the boundless
prospect; for the tower was reared upon
that lofty promontory on which Hercules
founded one of his pillars. The surges of the
sea were heard far below, beating upon the
rocks, the sea gull screamed and wheeled
about the foundations of the tower, and the
sails of lofty caraccas were as mere specks on
the bosom of the deep.
“Dost thou know yonder land beyond the
blue water?” said Yuza.
“It is Spain,” replied the boy, “it is the land
of my father and my mother.”
“Then stretch forth thy hands and bless it,
my child,” said the astrologer.
The boy let go his hold of the wall, and, as
he stretched forth his hands, the aged son of
Ishmael, exerting all the strength of his withered
limbs, suddenly pushed him over the battlements.
He fell headlong from the top of that
tall tower, and not a bone in his tender frame
but was crushed upon the rocks beneath.
Alahor came to the foot of the winding
stairs.
“Is the boy safe?” cried he.
“He is safe,” replied Yuza; “come and behold
the truth with thine own eyes.”
The emir ascended the tower and looked
over the battlements, and beheld the body of
the child, a shapeless mass, on the rocks far
below, and the sea gulls hovering about it; and
he gave orders that it should be thrown into the
sea, which was done.
On the following morning, the countess was
led forth from her dungeon into the public
square. She knew of the death of her child,
and that her own death was at hand, but she
neither wept nor supplicated. Her hair was
dishevelled, her eyes were haggard with watching,
and her cheek was as the monumental
stone, but there were the remains of commanding
beauty in her countenance, and the majesty
respect.
A multitude of christian prisoners were then
brought forth; and Alahor cried out—“Behold
the wife of Count Julian; behold one of that
traitorous family which has brought ruin upon
yourselves and upon your country.” And he
ordered that they should stone her to death.
But the christians drew back with horror from
the deed, and said—“In the hand of God is
vengeance, let not her blood be upon our
heads.” Upon this the emir swore with horrid
imprecations that whoever of the captives refused
should himself be stoned to death. So
the cruel order was executed, and the Countess
Frandina perished by the hands of her countrymen.
Having thus accomplished his barbarous
errand, the emir embarked for Spain, and ordered
the citadel of Ceuta to be set on fire,
and crossed the straights at night by the light
of its towering flames.
The death of Count Julian, which took place
not long after, closed the tragic story of his family.
How he died remains involved in doubt.
Some assert that the cruel Alahor pursued him
to his retreat among the mountains, and, having
taken him prisoner, beheaded him; others
that the Moors confined him in a dungeon,
and put an end to his life with lingering torments;
the castle of Marcuello, near Huesca, in Arragon,
in which he took refuge, fell on him
and crushed him to pieces. All agree that his
latter end was miserable in the extreme, and
his death violent. The curse of heaven, which
had thus pursued him to the grave, was extended
to the very place which had given him shelter;
for we are told that the castle is no longer
inhabited on account of the strange and horrible
noises that are heard in it; and that visions
of armed men are seen above it in the
air; which are supposed to be the troubled
spirits of the apostate christians who favoured
the cause of the traitor.
In after times a stone sepulchre was shown,
outside of the chapel of the castle, as the tomb
of Count Julian; but the traveller and the pilgrim
avoided it, or bestowed upon it a malediction;
and the name of Julian has remained
a bye-word and a scorn in the land for the
warning of all generations. Such ever be the
lot of him who betrays his country.
Here end the legends of the conquest of
Spain.
Written in the Alhambra, June 10, 1829.
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