Relics and Genealogies.
IF I HAD been pleased and interested by the count and his family, as
furnishing a picture of a Spanish domestic life, I was still more so
when apprised of historical circumstances which linked them with the
heroic times of Granada. In fact, in this worthy old cavalier, so
totally unwarlike, or whose deeds in arms extended, at most, to a
war on swallows and martlets, I discovered a lineal descendant and
actual representative of Gonsalvo of Cordova, "the Grand Captain," who
won some of his brightest laurels before the walls of Granada, and was
one of the cavaliers commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella to
negotiate the terms of surrender; nay, more, the count was entitled,
did he choose it, to claim remote affinity with some of the ancient
Moorish princes, through a scion of his house, Don Pedro Venegas,
surnamed the Tornadizo; and by the same token, his daughter, the
fascinating little Carmen, might claim to be rightful representative
of the princess Cetimerien or the beautiful Lindaraxa.*
* Lest this should be deemed a mere stretch of fancy, the reader
is referred to the following genealogy, derived by the historian
Alcantara, from an Arabian manuscript, on parchment, in the archives
of the marquis of Corvera. It is a specimen of the curious
affinities between Christians and Moslems, produced by capture and
intermarriages, during the Moorish wars.
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