"What are you doing here so early?" asked Almenon of the maiden.
"My father," answered the princess, becoming as red as the roses which the morning breeze was agitating by her side, "I have come to gaze upon and enjoy the odour of those flowers, to hear the carols of the birds, and to see the sun's rays sparkling in the fountains."
"What are you carrying in the folds of your dress?" asked the king in a stern voice.
"Roses which I have gathered from these bushes," replied Casilda, imploring from the bottom of her heart the aid of a holy being named Mary, of whom, when she was a child, she had heard the Christian slave speaking.
And Almenon, doubting her answer, opened the folds of her dress, and a shower of roses fell upon the ground.
From that day the princess redoubled her assistance and her consolations towards the captives; from that day she was more loved by her father; from that day she adored, on the altar of her heart, the Nazarene Divinity, and felt an ardent desire to adore Him in the Christian temples. God, who sometimes leads His creatures to their good by the strangest paths, struck down the bodily health of Casilda by a disease, which withered the roses on her cheeks and filled Almenon and his Court with uneasiness and fear.
The most famous physicians of Seville and Cordova were summoned to Toledo; but they exhausted their science, and could not restore the princess to health.
Almenon then wrote to the King of Leon and Castile, asking him to send the best physician at his Court, and Don Fernando hastened to comply with his request, for he also had daughters whom he loved, as Almenon loved his.
The Leonese doctor came to the conclusion that the only chance of saving the princess was by sending her to Castile, in which there was a lake, the waters of which had great curative virtues, especially regarding the disease from which Casilda was suffering.
And she went to Castile, entrusted by her father to the care of Don Fernando, and having bathed in the lake of San Vicente, which is in the province of Briviesca, she recovered her health, and the roses again bloomed on her cheeks.