, and acts of heroic brutality and bravery.

In 1233 a Moorish army conquered it, shortly after the battle of Alarcos
was lost to Alfonso VIII., at that time blindly in love with his
beautiful Jewish mistress, Rachel of Toledo. But the infidels did not
remain master of the situation, far less of the city, for any length of
time, as within the next year or so it fell again into the hands of its
founder, who strengthened the walls still standing to-day, and completed
the citadel.

The population of the city, like that of Toledo, was mixed. Christians,
Jews, and Moors lived together, each in their quarter, and together they
used the fertile _vegas_, which surround the town. The Jews and Moors
were, in the fifteenth century, about ten thousand in number; in 1492
the former were expelled by the Catholic kings, and in 1609 Philip III.
signed a decree expelling the Moors. Since then Plasencia has lost its
municipal wealth and importance, and the see, from being one of the
richest in Spain, rapidly sank until to-day it drags along a weary life,
impoverished and unimportant.

The Jewish cemetery is still to be seen in the outskirts of the town;
Arab remains, both architectural and irrigatory, are everywhere present,
and the quarter inhabited by them, the most picturesque in Plasencia,
is a Moorish village.

The city itself, crowning a hill beside the rushing Ierte, is a small
Toledo; its streets are narrow and winding; its church towers are
numerous, and the red brick houses warmly reflect the brilliancy of the
southern atmosphere. The same death, however, the same inactivity and
lack of movement, which characterize Toledo and other cities, hover in
the alleys and in the public squares, in the fertile _vegas_ and silent
_patios_ of Plasencia.

The history of the feuds between the great Castilian families who lived
here is tragically interesting: Hernan Perez killed by Diego Alvarez,
the son of one of the former's victims; the family of Monroye pitched
against the Zunigas and other noblemen,--these and many other traditions
are among the most stirring of the events that happened in Spain in the
middle ages.

Even the bishops called upon to occupy the see seem to have been slaves
to the warlike spirit that hovered, as it were, in the very atmosphere
of the town. The first prelate, Don Domingo, won the battle of Navas de
Tolosa for his protector, Alfonso VIII. When the Christian army was
wavering, he rushed to the front (wit