When the imprisoned captives, straining their eyes for any sign, see him surrounded by dusky Africans, to their eyes a bleeding corpse, their very souls seem dead within them. Pelistes gone, no help can come. To sell their lives dear, they sally forth, but are soon driven back into the convent, each noble Goth dying sword in hand. The convent is immediately occupied by the Moors, and from that time is known as “St. George of the Captives.”
Meanwhile, Pelistes found friends among his foes. Slowly his wounds healed, and until he was restored to health the Arabs carefully tended him. At length, when he was able to walk, Maguel (who frankly gloried in his apostasy) bade him to a banquet within the Alcazar. It was a sore trial to the feelings of the old warrior, but they were generous foes. As a prisoner, he could not refuse the hospitality of his hosts, but the woes of his country lay heavy at his heart. The grass was still green over the graves of his comrades, and to his fancy the weapons of the Moors were crimsoned with their blood.
Pelistes occupied the seat of honour on the right hand of Maguel, and with that exquisite courtesy, for which the Moors were famous, his host turned the talk on the valour displayed by the Christians, and extolled their gallant defence of Cordoba, specially remembering that devoted little band who had perished in the convent.
“Could I have saved their lives,” added Maguel, “it would have done me honour. Such enemies ennoble victory. Had those brave knights consented to surrender when I sent in a flag of truce I should have cherished them as brothers.”
Pelistes silently acknowledged the enlightened chivalry of these words, but his heart smote him so sorely that he could not speak for some moments. But for his final charge to them “not to surrender” they might be with him now! At length words came to him.
“Happy are the dead,” was his reply, in a voice that vibrated with emotion. “They rest in peace after the hard-fought struggle. My companions in arms have fallen with honour, while I live to see fair Spain the prey of strangers. My son is dead, cut down by my side in battle. My friends are gone, I have reason to weep for them. But one there is”—and he raised his voice and a dark fire came into his pale eye—“one for whom I shall never cease to mourn; of all my brothers in arms he was the dearest. Of all the Gothic knights he was the bravest. Alas! where is he? I know not. There is no record of his death in battle, or I would seek for him in the waters of the Guadalete, or on the plains of Xerez; or if, like so many others, he is doomed to slavery in a foreign land, I would join him in exile, and we would mourn our country’s loss together.”
So pathetic was the tone of Pelistes, so thrilling, that Maguel and the emirs who sat round asked anxiously, “Who is he?”
“His name,” answered Pelistes, with lowered voice, glancing round the table as he spoke, “was Don Julian, Conde Espatorios of Spain.”
“How,” cried Maguel, “my honoured guest, are you smitten with sudden blindness? Behold your friend. Do you not see him? He is seated there,” pointing to Julian, at some distance down the board, attired in the turban and long embroidered caftan of a Moor.
Pelistes paused, slowly raised his eyes, then sternly fixed them on Julian. “In the name of God, stranger, answer me,” he said, “how dare you presume to personate the Conde Espatorios?”