"Sand," continued Ferragut, "has changed the commercial routes and historic destinies of the Mediterranean."
Of the many deeds which had stretched along the scenes of the mare nostrum, the most famous in the captain's opinion was the unheard-of epic of Roger de Flor which he had known from childhood through the stories told him by the poet Labarta, by the Triton, and by that poor secretary who was always dreaming of the great past of the Catalan marine.
All the world was now talking about the blockade of the Dardanelles. The boats that furrowed the Mediterranean, merchant vessels as well as battleships, were furthering the great military operation that was developing opposite Gallipoli. The name of the long, narrow maritime pass which separates Europe and Asia was in every mouth. To-day the eyes of mankind were converged on this point just as, in remote centuries, they had been fixed on the war of Troy.
"We also have been there," said Ferragut with pride. "The Dardanelles
have been frequented for many years by the Catalans and the Aragonese.
Gallipoli was one of our cities governed by the Valencian, Ramon
Muntaner."
And he began the story of the Almogavars in the Orient, that romantic Odyssey across the ancient Asiatic provinces of the Roman Empire that ended only with the founding of the Spanish duchy of Athens and Neopatria in the city of Pericles and Minerva. The chronicles of the Oriental Middle Ages, the books of Byzantine chivalry, the fantastic tales of the Arab do not contain more improbable and dramatic adventures than the warlike enterprises of these Argonauts coming from the valleys of the Pyrenees, from the banks of the Ebro, and from the Moorish gardens of Valencia.
"Eighty years," said Ferragut, terminating his account of the glorious adventures of Roger de Flor around Gallipoli, "the Spanish duchy of Athens and Neopatria flourished. Eighty years the Catalans governed these lands."
And he pointed out on the horizon the place where the red haze of distant promontories and mountains outlined the Grecian land.
Such a duchy was in reality a republic. Athens and Thebes were administered in accordance with the laws of Aragon and its code was "The book of Usages and Customs of the City of Barcelona." The Catalan tongue ruled as the official language in the country of Demosthenes, and the rude Almogavars married with the highest ladies of the country.
The Parthenon was still intact as in the glorious times of ancient Athens. The august monument of Minerva converted into a Christian church, had not undergone any other modification than that of seeing a new goddess on its altars, La Virgen Santisima.
And in this thousand-year-old temple of sovereign beauty the Te Deum was sung for eighty years in honor of the Aragonese dukes, and the clergy preached in the Catalan tongue.