King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

108
MILITARY ORDERS
bade each other go with God: and I saw,
where the fiery ball of the sun had sunken,
only white wreaths of mist. I was aware,
for an hour of life, of the passing of time,
and the centuries stood still to be measured
above the dark irresistible stream. For
that hour I seemed to breathe in the heart
of the perdurable, and in the world of
change, to enter into the changeless.
The
western
land
r
Alcantara, as I have said, belonged to
the west, and it was a mere accident of
politics, that for a time (and perhaps
intermittently even then) it gave obedience
to Calatrava. D. Frey Arias Perez was a
Gallegan and Alfonso IX was his friend,
and gave him houses in Badajoz and else-
where: and when the King died, he stood
out for the orphan princesses Dulce and
Sancha, holding in their name Merida,
Badajoz, Coria and Ciudad Rodrigo, with
many other towns. As they had, in the
end, poor ladies! to accept a compromise,
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HISPANIC NOTES