Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 07 (of 15), Spanish

CHARLES V. AT YUSTE.
Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality
By Charles Morris Author of Half-Hours with the Best American Authors, Tales from the Dramatists, etc. in fifteen volumes Volume VII
Copyright 1898, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
Copyright 1904, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
Copyright 1908, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
Long had the Goths been lords of Spain. Chief after chief had they chosen, king after king had they served; and, though it was young in time, Gothic Spain was growing old in years. It reached its golden age in the time of Good King Wamba, a king of fancy as much as of fact, under whom Spain became a land of Arcady, everybody was happy, all things prospered, and the tide of evil events for a space ceased to flow.
In those days, when a king died and left no son, the Goths elected a new one, seeking their best and worthiest, and holding the election in the place where the old king had passed away. It was in the little village of Gerticos, some eight miles from the city of Valladolid, that King Recesuinto had sought health and found death. Hither came the electors,—the great nobles, the bishops, and the generals,—and here they debated who should be king, finally settling on a venerable Goth named Wamba, the one man of note in all the kingdom who throughout his life had declined to accept rank and station.
Leave your plough in the furrow, they said to him; nobler work awaits you. You have been elected king of Spain.
There is no nobler work, answered Wamba. Seek elsewhere your monarch. I prefer to rule over my fields.
The astonished heralds knew not what to make of this. To them the man who would not be king must be a saint—or an idiot. They reasoned, begged, implored, until Wamba, anxious to get rid of them, said,—