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The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes

Note 24 — RINCONETE AND CORTADILLO:

Walter K. (Walter Keating) Kelly translation

Our readers will perceive that this relates to the atrocity committed by the Infant Don Juan of Castille, who, while in revolt against his brother, Sancho IV., appeared before the city of Tarifa with an army, chiefly composed of Mahometans; finding the infant son of the governor, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, at nurse in a neighbouring village, he took the child, and bearing him to the foot of the walls, called on Guzman to surrender the place on pain of seeing his infant slaughtered before his eyes in case of refusal. The only reply vouchsafed by Don Alonzo was the horrible one alluded to in the text. He detached his own dagger from its belt, and threw it to Don Juan, when the sanguinary monster, far from respecting the fidelity of his opponent, seized the weapon, and pierced the babe to the heart as he had threatened to do This anecdote is related, with certain variations, in Conde, "La Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana."—See English Translation, vol. iii.

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