THE first problem that faces the student of this cantar de gesta is that of determining whether he is concerned with one epic or with two. It is plain that the restitution of the Count of Saldania to Bernardo concludes an action which was begun by the imprisonment of the count; it is the conclusion of the Cantar de Bernardo, properly so called. But, after this curtain falls, the 655th chapter of the PCG continues to discuss adventures attributed to the hero. Alfonso, despite his anger, is there said to have given the hero horses and money and to have sent him to France1, and Mila's manuscript, as quoted by Dr Heinermann, adds the reason-that Bernardo would find in France his true kinsfolk. Proceeding to Paris, Bernardo claimed to be the son of Timbor; his claim was rejected by another of her sons, because it was not true2. Bernardo then defied his half-brother, and, receiving horses and money from Charles, ravaged parts of France, crossed the Aspa Pass in the Pyrenees, colonised the Canal de Jaca and a number of points in Aragon, and married Galinda, daughter of Alardos of Latre, from whom the Aragonese family of the Galindez was derived. This action, if we suppose it to be independent of the other, could be termed Bernardo en Francia from its only developed incident. The genealogical tree of the Galindez and the statement of Bernardo of Ribagorza's conquests are, in the PCG, mere lists of names, and do not attain to the dimensions of an epic or a lay until Mila's Canso del Pros Bernat, produced under the full impulse of Romanticism. We have, therefore, to do with an epic consisting of only one episode. Moreover, this episode is constructed out of contradictory data. It is probably unprecedented that a king should couple a sentence of banishment, promulgated as the climax of a long series of mutual recriminations, with friendly advice as to how the exile might conveniently bestow himself. It is highly improbable that, after divesting Bernardo of his castle of El Carpio, after suffering his ruinous forays over a series of