“Oh, he!” she said, “when I told my father what he had done, he sent and had him put to death.
“And now,” she continued, “did I not tell you that time would reveal to you all about my history? For now that you have seen who and where I am, there is little left to tell. While I was yet little more than a child, my father would have married me against my inclination to a prince of Scotland; and I, knowing his intention, went out from the palace in the night, disguised, upon a swift mare, and when I had ridden a long way, I came to the sea-coast. I found a ship into which, thoughtless child, I sought refuge, only caring to get away from the prince of Scotland.
“But they were corsairs who manned the vessel; and they carried me off with them to Tunis, where you found me, and set me free from that terrible suffering.”
While we were talking, the king came up; and as I was yet musing on the marvellous direction of Providence, by which the lot had fallen on me, rather than another, to come on the embassage to the palace, without which I had been like never again to have met my bride, it fell into my mind that I had yet the letter to give to his Majesty, which having reached to him, he read thus aloud:—
“That I rest in holy ground, my soul at peace, is due to thee; therefore, when the perfidious captain threw thee into the deep sea, I was there; I provided the plank which carried thee to shore; I was the hermit that received and nourished thee; I was captain of the ship that brought thee to Ireland. And now live long with thy good spouse, and rest after many misfortunes, even as I rest in the eternal habitations.”
Then I knew that it was the soul of him I buried at Tunis that had thus befriended me.
Not very long after this the king died, and all the people acclaimed me as their sovereign, where I have been reigning ever since, full of happiness and glory.
[1] Though neither of the persons in this piece are Spanish, nor the scene laid in the Peninsula, it is thoroughly Spanish in character, and the subject of one or two popular ballads, and several dramas, by the best authors. [↑]