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

IN SPAIN
213
It is hard not to see these figures as
miniatures in a Book of Hours or Chroni-
cles: slender youths in vivid green and
scarlet, sinuous girlish forms in blue and
rose, all inhuman as the flowers in the grass,
as the bright birds in cages of osier or gilded
wire. They have their passions, doubtless,
and the death of the Master in the history
is as terribly real as the death of Lear;
for a moment the beating of time’s wings
is stopped. You feel hearts throb and
sicken, but you turn on, and over the leaf
find a quaint case of conscience.
Miniatures
D. Pedro Ruiz de Sandoval was called
A case of
Pig-face, perhaps for some personal deform-
ity, but he was a gentleman of a nice
honour. During the war between King
Peter and his usurping brother two Mas-
ters were in the field, and after D. Peter’s
murder one resigned. Now Sandoval was
in command of a castle, which he had
sworn to his lawful King that he would
not give up without his leave: and he
refused to admit the new Master. He
resigned the command of the castle to his
squire, and put himself in the hands of the
conscience
AND MONOGRAPHS