Note 2 — Chapter VII · : Roderic, Last of the Goths

Tradition2 has it, then, that as Roderic was about to plunge into the waters of the Guadalquivir a divine light burst upon him, and a secret voice adjured him to repent of his sins and live. Acting upon the advice of this inward counsellor, he divested himself of his royal insignia, and taking from the dead the garment of a humble peasant, stole from the field. All night he fled, haunted by fearful visions of the wrath to come. On all sides he beheld the dreadful consequences of his defeat. Staggering on through scenes of misery and ruin which wrung his heart, he came at length, after seven days’ travel, to the monastery of Canlin, on the banks of the river Ana, near Minda. The place was deserted, but the wretched fugitive cast himself down beside the altar to await his doom in prayer, for he fully believed that sooner or later the infidels would trace him to this retreat and dispatch him. He fed the lamps with oil, only leaving the holy shrine from time to time to see if the Saracens approached. Beneath the crucifix he lay, clasping the feet of the Redeemer’s image, and weeping icy tears of penitence. As he grovelled there he became aware that some one had entered the chapel, and, raising his eyes in hope of a speedy death by the scimitar of a Moorish soldier, to his surprise he beheld a monk, who gently addressed him, and explained that he had returned to the place which for threescore years and five he had called home, trusting to die there by the hand of an infidel and thus to gain the crown of a martyr.