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III. Then my Cid assembled together his good men and said unto them, Friends, we cannot take up our abode in this castle, for there is no water in it, and moreover the King is at peace with these Moors, and I know that the treaty between them hath been written; so that if we should abide here he would come against us with all his power, and with all the power of the Moors, and we could not stand against him.
XXXI. My Cid went his way toward Valencia, and he appointed Pero Bermudez and Muno Gustios, than whom there were no better two in all his household, to keep company with the Infantes of Carrion and be their guard, and he bade them spy out what their conditions were; and this they soon found out.
Great was the joy of the Cid and his people that day, and from thenceforward he was called My Cid the Campeador, Lord of Valencia. X. Now was it bruited abroad throughout all lands, how the Cid Ruydiez had won the noble city of Valencia.
And when the Moors saw this they rejoiced and were exceeding glad, and they opened the gates of the town, and sent to tell these tidings to those in the suburbs. And they came with their wives and children into the town, each to the house which had been his before the Cid won it.
Above all, the Cid, the famous Cid, flew from one part of Spain to another, at the head of the invincible band with whom his fame had surrounded him, everywhere achieving victories for the Christians, and even lending the aid of his arms to the Moors when they were internally divided, but always securing success to the party he favoured.
And incontinently they began to go out of the city with their wives and children, all except those whom the Cid had commanded to abide there; and as the Moors went out the Christians who dwelt in Alcudia entered in. And the history saith, that so great was the multitude which departed, that they were two whole days in going out.
Robert Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid" is all translation from the Spanish, but is not translation from a single book. Its groundwork is that part of the Cronica General de Espana, the most ancient of the Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully told.
He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which with more quartos than a real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et ossa fuit" surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid.
As, for example, Cardinal Richelieu, who was undoubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or perhaps of any other, had the idle vanity of being thought the best poet too; he envied the great Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to be written upon the "Cid."
An eighth son, the famous Mudarra, whose mother is a noble Moorish lady, at last avenges all the wrongs of his race. But from the earliest period, the Cid has been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of Spanish history or fable. They were first collected in 1612, and have been continually republished to the present day.
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