Ximena and Lambra continued to get together all the articles necessary for a long journey.
"Do you intend to bring these trifles with you?" asked the dueña, showing to her mistress a casket which, with other things, she had taken from a drawer.
"Yes," answered Ximena; "for that casket contains many souvenirs of my mother.... But oh!" she added, "it also contains some of Rodrigo. Give it to me, give it to me. I will keep for ever those of my mother, but I shall burn those of that traitor."
And taking the case in her hand, she began to turn over the things which it contained. They were, for the most part, ribbons, flowers, rings, and children's toys. The first she drew out was a wreath of flowers. "Ah!" she said, "with this wreath he adorned my brow on my fifteenth birthday!"
She was about to pull it to pieces with her hands, but she feared to touch the flowers, as if they were covered with thorns. She then drew forth a black curl bound with green ribbon, and said, "Here is a lock of his hair which he gave me the last time we were together at Gormaz, as a pledge of a love which he himself has destroyed!" And she raised her hand to cast it far from her; but she stopped, pensive, and apparently struggling with opposing feelings. Suddenly tears gushed from her eyes, and she cried out, placing the wreath and the curl again in the casket, "Leave them there, Lambra, leave them there; and let this wreath and this curl be the haircloth to torture me in my solitude."
The maiden remained motionless for a short time, during which she ran over in her imagination the story of her love—the story of her life—for they were both but one. The purest love,—ardent, surrounded with heavenly illusions, with gilded dreams, with light, with flowers,—the beauty of which can only be understood by certain enamoured souls,—had entirely made up the life of Ximena. And at seeing her hopes blasted, at seeing parched up, never to sprout forth again, that flower of paradise which perfumed and inebriated her soul, she felt her heart torn with the profoundest sadness, with an immense despair, with an agony that cannot be described. The youth or the maiden who has consecrated entire years to a love which holds its mastery in dreams as well as in waking hours, always sweet, always beautiful, always surrounded by an enchantment superior to all other enchantments of this world, and in a day, in a few hours, loses, without hope of recovering it, the object of that love—such a youth or maiden only can comprehend the grief of Ximena. In those moments of terrible despair the sole comfort that can be found is to have a mother, a father, a brother, a friend—some being sufficiently good and sensible not to laugh at our tears, so that we may cast ourselves into his arms and weep on his breast, saying, "My heart is pierced; give me, for the sake of God, a little love, with which I may calm my grief; fill up, as much as is in your power, that deep void which is left in my soul; make less bitter the transition state from hope to despair!"
And it was granted to Ximena to enjoy that comfort: she had Lambra beside her, plain and homely, perhaps, but affectionate and good, and she threw herself into her arms and solaced herself with copious tears.
On that same day the disconsolate girl set out for Castile, accompanied by the dueña and a few of her servants; and tradition affirms that, after them, a youth went out from Leon, who stopped on an eminence near the city, and followed with his gaze the daughter of Don Gome, until a distant turn of the road removed her from his view.