We were strangers to each other,-
We simply did not understand;
But you soon became my brother
When I held you by the hand.

Or let it mean what it may mean, and be done, in Satan's name! we begin to think; let it be, if it must be, Rabshakeh's outspoken derision of Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, in plain Jew's language, to the people on the wall; and the old reviling mood returns, and we cease

You used to say I gave you colic;

The thought of you gave me the gripes;
At last we meet in friendly frolic,

Happy as two gutter-snipes.

Once more, upon this matter of paraphrasing, it will be noted that I have in one instance at least followed strange gods indeed-in the beautiful instance of Du bist wie eine Blume. It has lately found credence, I am told, in some dull corner of credulity and perversion, that Heine in that sweet cry had no serious mood of love or prayer or of blessing or of faith; but that at the end he lightly and contemptuously laughed in the face, not only of the child he prayed for, but of the God he prayed to. I see nothing in the poem, or in any poem or any mood of Heine to give credence to that bitter and crazy guess. But that Heine might have had the thought-deeply hidden as an unshed tear-of the agonizing futility of faith or prayer to serve or save the frail bearer of the burden of the fatal gift of beauty. I have adopted the conceit in my translation, which I entitle, "To a Child."

In the last stanza of the verses which I entitle, "Horns of Elfland," I hesitated between the fairly literal rendition which I have included in the verses accompanying this, and a paraphrase, which, after all, is nearer, it may be, to Heine's manner and meaning

As the elfin queen fled past me,

Her moonlit face turned on me laughing.
Was it death she meant, or true-love?—
Or may be she was only chaffing!

The rendition which I have finally adopted is, in truth, paraphasis to the extent that the mood of sorrow therein is not expressed in the original. A closer rendition as to the letter might be

The elf queen as she passed flashed on me

A strange smile that still elates me.
Did she mean I'll win my sweetheart?
Or that early death awaits me?

Yet that, too, injects the mood of elation, not quite expressed in the original verse, though felt to be the very breath and aroma of the poem, as of so many poems of Heine, where the insistent cry and passionate prayer is for love or death. Another rejected stanza of mine, then, is, after all, closest to the literal meaning

As the elfin queen fled by me,

She turned on me with sweet laughter.
Did she mean I'll win a new love?

Or that Death is following after?

It may also be noted from the verses, "Horns of Elfand." that I have not hesitated to adopt another pretty conceit of the translator, as I have half a dozen times in the various translations, that of bodily incorporating the immortal words of English poets, where, as is so often the case, the literal meaning of the words of Heine is for all times and tongues immemorially preserved; those

Jewels five words long,

That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever

No borrowed phrase that I have used, not Shakespeare's or another's, is more lovely than many, its compeers, in the perfect poetry of Heine. And any German translator of Tennyson or of Poe, or even of Rossetti or of Keats, may well look with favor upon this princely interchange as of gifts and odes between Protus and Cleon. And, to hold the bright thought of any Prince of Song, he may choose from Heine's dazzling store, many a jeweled cup his lip hath bettered

[The concluding installment of this article and the remainder of the verses referred to, will appear in the next issue.]

THE PUMP ROOM

In the Pump-room, so admirably adapted for secret discourse and unlimited confidence.

NORTHANGER ABBEY.

ZAMORA AND ITS FAMOUS SIEGE

On December 27, 1065, Ferdinand the First of Spain, called the Great, lay dying. The most statesmanlike accomplishment of his long and distinguished reign had been to unite under one crown the kingdoms of León and Castile. Ferdinand had always kept this aim before him, for he knew how often civil war between rival counts and kinglets had kept the Christians from exerting their full strength against their traditional enemies, the Moors. Yet, on his death-bed, family affection overcame his royal judgment, and he undid in an hour the work of a lifetime. He had five children, and he felt bound to leave to each one some part of his kingdom, instead of allowing his entire domain to pass with the crown to the prince royal. So he willed Castile to Sancho, the eldest son, León to Alfonso, and to Garcia, the youngest boy, he gave Galicia, a new kingdom on the confines of Portugal. His two daughters he remembered with walled towns: Toro he gave to Elvira; and to Urraca, the elder, Zamora.

Zamora was at that time one of the most impregnable fortresses of Spain. The river Duero cuts close under its steep south rock, and the rest of its hill was then encircled by massive protecting walls. Sancho, called the Strong, who had not waited for his father's last breath to decide that a united kingdom was worth more than a testament, defeated his two brothers and seized their kingdoms in less than seven years. Elvira resigned her heritage without a struggle. But when Sancho, with the united armies of Castile and León at his back, sate down before Zamora, he is said to have

exclaimed: "If I hold Zamora, I hold Spain." He knew the task which lay before him, and which gave rise to the Spanish proverb, "Zamora was never won in an hour," as in English we say, "Rome was not built in a day." Urraca and her citadel represented to him the final obstacle which lay between him and the broad highway of uncontested sovereignty.

Urraca was of sharper mettle than her sister. When Sancho sent an embassy, headed by the most famous champion of his time, Roderick the Cid, to offer her certain other lands in exchange for her city, she summoned her knights and elders, and laid the case before them. Should she secretly escape from the town and take refuge in Toledo with one of the Moorish kings, as her brother Alfonso had done, or should she stay and fight to the limit of her endurance and that of her citizens? She left the decision to her counsellors. They, fully conscious of the gravity of the case, declared their willingness to support their lady to the death. The embassy returned to Sancho with the negative reply, and the siege

was on.

It lasted seven months, and we may suppose consisted of the usual attacks and repulses, forays and withdrawals, with cross-bowmen shooting from behind the merlons at knights encased in steel from head to foot. Occasionally the besiegers made the effort to cross the moat and place ladders against the masonry. Before the invention of gunpowder, walls like those of Zamora were a genuine shield, and it required an overwhelming superiority of numbers to master them. In the end the siege developed into a starvation.

Numerous enemies of Sancho had come in to aid the Zamorans. Among them was one Vellido Dolfos, a Galician, the villain-or the hero of the ensuing drama. As Urraca was on the point of surrendering in despair, for Sancho had all the resources of northern Spain to draw on, and she none outside her walls, this stranger knight presented himself, and asked her to stay for a few days the execution of her decision.

He undertook to raise the siege if she would trust him. Urraca did not know what scheme he had in mind, but she accepted his offer, and promised to reward him in the event of success.

Vellido's plan was classic in its treachery. In Babylon, in Troy, in a hundred sieges, it had been tried, sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. Urraca's oldest counsellor, the most trusted and honorable, was Arias Gonzalo, of whom and of whose sons more will be told. Arias, fearing a treason which he scorned to profit by, demanded of Vellido that he explain his plan. This gave the Galician the opening he wished. He provoked a quarrel with the aged knight, and, threatened with punishment, fled straight out of the city to Sancho's camp. To the king he represented that he had been nearly murdered for suggesting that the city be surrendered. He offered his services to Sancho and promised to show him a gate little guarded, easy to storm.

All the warnings of Arias Gonzalo, who shouted from the walls that the king had better beware of the traitor, only served to bear out the story of the wily Vellido. Sancho was deceived, and with the undue confidence of a headstrong monarch, went unescorted with Vellido to reconnoiter the postern. Catching the king in a careless moment, Vellido hurled a javelin into his back with such force that the point appeared through his breast. So died Sancho II, on October 6, 1072, at the age of 35.

The legend goes on to say that the Cid caught a glimpse of Vellido fleeing toward the walls, seized the nearest horse, and pursued the Galician to the very gate; and that, failing his quarry, he uttered a forceful and comprehensive curse on any knight who left his tent without his spurs, as he had done that day. This, says the ancient chronicler, was the only mistake the Cid ever made in all his life as a warrior: that he did not ride through the open gate into the town and kill Vellido within, even at the risk of his life. But, he adds, for fear the fame of Spain's legendary hero might be a little