This, indeed, will outlive all their queenly titles,
and shows her to us as the bright-hearted girl who, in spite of
sorrow, of trouble, and of loss, developed into the strong and
self-reliant woman.
THERESA OF AVILA:
THE GIRL OF THE SPANISH SIERRAS.
[Afterward known as St. Theresa of Avila.] A.D. 1525.
It is a stern and gray old city that the sun looks down upon,
when once he does show his jolly face above the saw-like ridges
of the grim Guadarrama Mountains in Central Spain; a stern and
gray old city as well it may be, for it is one of the very old
towns of Western Europe--Avila, said by some to have been built
by Albula, the mother of Hercules nearly four thousand years ago.
Whether or not it was the place in which that baby gymnast
strangled the serpents who sought to kill him in his cradle, it
is indeed ancient enough to suit any boy or girl who likes to dig
among the relics of the past. For more than eight centuries the
same granite walls that now surround it have lifted their gray
ramparts out of the vast and granite-covered plains that make the
country so wild and lonesome, while its eighty-six towers and
gateways, still unbroken and complete, tell of its strength and
importance in those far-off days, when the Cross was battling
with the Crescent, and Christian Spain, step by step, was forcing
Mohammedan Spain back to the blue Mediterranean and the arid
wastes of Africa, from which, centuries before, the followers of
the Arabian Prophet had come.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156