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He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred.
The simple story about which so much has been written and sung is this: As the retreating army of Charlemagne was crossing the Pyrenees, the rear of the army under Roland and Olivier was ambuscaded in the narrow pass of Roncesvalles by the Basques and exterminated to a man. These Basques were the unconquerable mountain tribe of which we heard so much in the early history of Spain.
He who was brought up in Camelot, he who wept when Roland at Roncesvalles blew his horn for the last time, now devours blood-curdling detective stories, vile things in paper covers, which he keeps concealed about his person, and whips out at odd moments. What he hates is a book with the slightest hint of a love affair.
The advantages of wealth which are conferred by the neighbourhood of the capital of Navarre are rapidly lost as one proceeds; the houses grow rarer, the shrines more ruinous and more aged, until one comes at last upon the bleak valley which introduces the final approach to Roncesvalles. The wealth and order everywhere associated with the Basque blood have wholly disappeared.
'Wait for your men, said Sire de Lautrec to him; but Gaston took no heed, and followed by only twenty or thirty men-at-arms, he threw himself upon those retreating troops." He was immediately surrounded, thrown from his horse, and defending himself all the while, "like Roland at Roncesvalles," say the chroniclers, he fell pierced with wounds.
It has for some who were most blessed outlasted, you may say, all material things which they handled or they knew all fabrics, all instruments, all habitations. It is comparable in its endurance to the years, and a man reads the "Song of Roland" and can still look on that same unchanged Cleft of Roncesvalles, or a man reads the Iliad and can look to-day westward from the shores to Tenedos.
"It is too late to return to Roncesvalles, for our steeds are weary and exhausted. Take off their saddles and their bridles, and let them refresh themselves upon the field." "Sire, it is well said," replied the Franks. So the knights, leaping from their horses, took saddle and bridle from them, and let them wander free upon the green meadows by the river-side.
History says no more; but in the poetry of the people there is a longer and a more faithful memory than in the court of kings. The disaster of Roncesvalles and the heroism of the warriors who perished there became, in France, the object of popular sympathy and the favorite topic for the exercise of the popular fancy.
Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
Now it is an established fact that all or most famous knights-errant have some special gift, one that of being proof against enchantment, another that of being made of such invulnerable flesh that he cannot be wounded, as was the famous Roland, one of the twelve peers of France, of whom it is related that he could not be wounded except in the sole of his left foot, and that it must be with the point of a stout pin and not with any other sort of weapon whatever; and so, when Bernardo del Carpio slew him at Roncesvalles, finding that he could not wound him with steel, he lifted him up from the ground in his arms and strangled him, calling to mind seasonably the death which Hercules inflicted on Antaeus, the fierce giant that they say was the son of Terra.
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