circumstances were imperious. The vassals came to do homage to the new bridegroom; they danced at night, supped, and retired to rest. The chamber of the young couple being near to that of Hildebrand, he said, in thinking of the happiness of his daughter, that he much wished Matilda would finish, and deign to change the system, and consent at length to count his cares by days, and not by years."

THE MOORS.

THE more we read the more we may observe, in comparing the different æras, that the women, in order to burst their bonds, have commonly conspired without a necessity of understanding one another, and, in a favourable moment, marched towards the same end, by a secret agreement of which their inte

rests alone apprized them. It is neither good nor evil that I aim to assert of them, it is the simple truth. I am far from believing that in the following plan, which led them to fly from slavery, and made them desire domination, they were always conducted by a commendable design; but they have nevertheless discovered an energy, and above all a method in it, which seems contrary to their nature. We must, in other respects do them justice: either through mildness or weakness they have not, amidst all the extravagant and cruel ideas which have governed mankind, associated themselves to the cruelties which have desolated the earth. Some particular ones were, it is true, monsters; we cannot recollect, without horror, Fredegonde, Brunehaut, and some others, who have laden themselves with disgrace; but the women have never united to support any system of atrocity. The reign of terror was, in France, the production of the

men alone. The women were only its victims. Robespierre found among them neither a mistress nor a friend; and it is to the courageous arm of a woman that France owes the happiness of being delivered from the horrible monster Marat.-The women in Asia, victims sacrificed by the laws of Mahomet, warned by a kind of instinct of the danger which threatened them, had it in their power to stab the prophet, and suffered him to live. Thus, then, for three centuries, the whole sex appeared and acted. First of all to support the mild and pure morality of Jesus Christ; afterwards to dictate a code full of the honour of chivalry; and lastly, to favour the revival of letters in Europe. Before this last period, when their genius and their understanding secured to them, in Italy, a merited reputation, they enjoyed in Spain a do

* Charlotte Corday.

minion too splendid to be passed over in silence. Their influence among the Moors is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of women. Perhaps they never exercised their mild power in a more brilliant manner than at Granada. They there fully proved that they could reign over us without obliging us to forget our duties, and that they knew how to inspire heroism even in the bosom of voluptuousness.

After the invasion of Europe, by the barbarians of the North, the Moors, subjects of the Carthagenians, the Romans, and the Greeks, and afterwards subdued by the Arabs, who introduced among them the religion of Mahomet, islamism, and the love of glory, took

* It is difficult to say what is the precise meaning of this term, particularly as used here. Islâm was understood by the Mohammedans to have been the true religion professed in the first ages of the world, as far down, according to some, as the deluge; but, according to others, not after the murder of Abel. TRANSLATOR.

possession of Spain under the Calif Valid* the first. He sent from Egypt Moussa† Ben Nazir, an expert and valiant general; who, aided by Tarik ‡, defeated Roderic, in the year 712, took Toledo, and completed, in a short time, the conquest of Spain.

It is not known whether the Spaniards derived their gallantry from the Moors, or whether they imparted it to the latter.

However this be, the agreeable politeness of the Moors of Granada, and their chivalric manners, were celebrated, and are still. "Almost at the same time," says Florian, a Moor cut off heads, which he fixed in triumph to his saddle, wrote polite and amorous letters to his mistress, lavished for her his treasures and his life; and, covered with the sweat and blood of the combat, gave entertainments at which shone

* Sometimes written Ulid or Ulit.

+ Or Mouza.

Or Tarif.

TRANSLATOR.