"'Your horse is faint, my King, my Lord! your gallant horse is sick,-- His limbs are torn, his breast is gored, on his eye the film is thick; Mount, mount on mine, O mount apace, I pray thee mount and fly! Or in my arms I'll lift your Grace,--their trampling hoofs are nigh!
"'Nay, never speak; my sires, Lord King, received their land from yours, And joyfully their blood shall spring, so be it thine secures; If I should fly, and thou, my King, be found among the dead, How could I stand 'mong gentlemen, such scorn on my gray head?'
"So spake the brave Montañez, Butrago's lord was he; And turned him to the coming host in steadfastness and glee; He flung himself among them, as they came down the hill,-- He died, God wot! but not before his sword had drunk its fill."
The city of Santillana, whose lords once laid claim to the sovereignty of Santander, has shrunk to a forgotten village, and the neglected church is dropping into ruins; but the inhabitants have abated not a jot of that fierce local patriotism which blinds the provincial Spaniard to all defects of his birthplace and to all excellences of rival towns. A graybeard told the stranger ladies that Santillana was the oldest city in Spain and its cathedral the most beautiful. This latter statement they were almost ready to accept, so richly carven was the yellow stone and so harmonious the proportions of nave and aisle. When they arrived at this miniature Durham they found it closed and silent, with three little boys sleeping on the steps. Through the benevolence of the ever present Spanish loafers, the sacristan was sought out and a ragged escort formed for their progress from chapel to chapel, where rare old pictures and frescos glowed across the dusk. Best of all were the venerable cloisters, weed-grown and tumble-down, but lovely as a mediæval dream with mellow-tinted arch and column, and with capitals of marvellous device. This crumbling church still keeps a dazzling hoard of treasures. All the front of the high altar is wrought of solid silver, the reredos is a miracle of art, and the paintings of old masters that moulder here unseen would long since in any other land than Catholic Spain have been the spoils of gallery and museum.