“Blessed be God and all His saints,” said the Cid to his followers. “By this victory we have bettered our quarters for horses and for men. Hear me, all you knights,” and he raised his mighty voice, “we shall get nothing by killing these Moors. Let us make them show us the treasures they have hidden in their houses. That will serve us better than their death.”
All this and much more was done, as the Cid said, por murzar. Enemies or friends, money must be had.
But the great feat of the Cid’s life is his conquest of Valencia, where he was called to protect the Sheikh Yahia along with the Moorish king of Saragossa. Upon whatever cause he went (and the chronicles are extremely confused after he took service with the Moslem), ambition was his motive and pillage his object.
From Jativa, on the hills over the sea, he came down with his army into the Huerta, an unexampled garden, beautiful in all time: woods of palm and orange-trees, fences of aloes and prickly pear, the glory of the Roman, the pleasaunce of the Goth, the delight of the Arab, who declared “that heaven had fallen here.”
Valencia itself lies sweetly on either side of a river, the banks breaking into bosques and gardens, with tall towers shooting into the blue sky. El Miguelete, square and Gothic, its rival Aliberfar, all points, minarets, and domes,—the Zeca (bazaar) and Alcazar,—bridge, twelve gates, and tapia battlements, turreted and machicolated, hemmed in by fruitful plains, the rich country studded with posadas and quintas to the sea-shore, about a mile distant.
The Moorish Sheikh Yahia received the Cid honourably, and gave him a great revenue in
