Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete
CHAPTER IV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY HORSEMAN
It was a burning and sultry noon, when, through a small valley, skirted by rugged and precipitous hills, at the distance of several leagues from Granada, a horseman, in complete armour, wound his solitary way; His mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his coal-black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the absence of page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements, would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging tree, offered its temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was heard in a copse that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the horse started suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie. He looked mechanically upward, and beheld the figure of a man bounding through the trees, with rapid and irregular steps. It was a form that suited well the silence and solitude of the spot; and might have passed for one of those stern recluses—half hermit, half soldier—who, in the earlier crusades, fixed their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of Palestine. The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose gown—a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass—was rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimiter, a knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped and bound with iron.
As the horseman gazed at this abrupt intruder on the solitude, his frame quivered with emotion; and, raising himself to his full height, he called aloud, “Fiend or santon—whatsoever thou art—what seekest thou in these lonely places, far from the king thy counsels deluded, and the city betrayed by thy false prophecies and unhallowed charms?”
“Ha!” cried Almamen, for it was indeed the Israelite; “by thy black charger, and the tone of thy haughty voice, I know the hero of Granada. Rather, Muza Ben Abil Gazan, why art thou absent from the last hold of the Moorish empire?”
“Dost thou pretend to read the future, and art thou blind to the present? Granada has capitulated to the Spaniard. Alone I have left a land of slaves, and shall seek, in our ancestral Africa, some spot where the footstep of the misbeliever hath not trodden.”
“The fate of one bigotry is, then, sealed,” said Almamen, gloomily; “but that which succeeds it is yet more dark.”
“Dog!” cried Muza, couching his lance, “what art thou that thus blasphemest?”
“A Jew!” replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his cimiter: “a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of a race of kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the Nazarene more hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was not their more renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt—man to man: I defy thee”
“No, no,” muttered Muza, sinking his lance; “thy mail is rusted with the blood of the Spaniard, and this arm cannot smite the slayer of the Christian. Part we in peace.”
“Hold, prince!” said Almamen, in an altered voice: “is thy country the sole thing dear to thee? Has the smile of woman never stolen beneath thine armour? Has thy heart never beat for softer meetings than the encounter of a foe?”
“Am I human, and a Moor?” returned Muza. “For once you divine aright; and, could thy spells bestow on these eyes but one more sight of the last treasure left to me on earth, I should be as credulous of thy sorcery as Boabdil.”
“Thou lovest her still, then—this Leila?”
“Dark necromancer, hast thou read my secret? and knowest thou the name of my beloved one? Ah! let me believe thee indeed wise, and reveal to me the spot of earth which holds the delight of my soul! Yes,” continued the Moor, with increased emotion, and throwing up his vizor, as if for air—“yes; Allah forgive me! but, when all was lost at Granada, I had still one consolation in leaving my fated birthplace: I had licence to search for Leila; I had the hope to secure to my wanderings in distant lands one to whose glance the eyes of the houris would be dim. But I waste words. Tell me where is Leila, and conduct me to her feet!”
“Moslem, I will lead thee to her,” answered Almamen, gazing on the prince with an expression of strange and fearful exultation in his dark eyes: “I will lead thee to her-follow me. It is only yesternight that I learned the walls that confined her; and from that hour to this have I journeyed over mountain and desert, without rest or food.”
“Yet what is she to thee?” asked Muza, suspiciously.
“Thou shalt learn full soon. Let us on.”
So saying, Almamen sprang forward with a vigour which the excitement of his mind supplied to the exhaustion of his body. Muza wonderingly pushed on his charger, and endeavoured to draw his mysterious guide into conversation: but Almamen scarcely heeded him. And when he broke from his gloomy silence, it was but in incoherent and brief exclamations, often in a tongue foreign to the ear of his companion. The hardy Moor, though steeled against the superstitions of his race, less by the philosophy of the learned than the contempt of the brave, felt an awe gather over him as he glanced, from the giant rocks and lonely valleys, to the unearthly aspect and glittering eyes of the reputed sorcerer; and more than once he muttered such verses of the Koran as were esteemed by his countrymen the counterspell to the machinations of the evil genii.
It might be an hour that they had thus journeyed together, when Almamen paused abruptly. “I am wearied,” said he, faintly; “and, though time presses, I fear that my strength will fail me.”
“Mount, then, behind me,” returned the Moor, after some natural hesitation: “Jew though thou art, I will brave the contamination for the sake of Leila.”
“Moor!” cried the Hebrew, fiercely, “the contamination would be mine. Things of yesterday, as thy Prophet and thy creed are, thou canst not sound the unfathomable loathing which each heart faithful to the Ancient of Days feels for such as thou and thine.”
“Now, by the Kaaba!” said Muza, and his brow became dark, “another such word and the hoofs of my steed shall trample the breath of blasphemy from thy body.”
“I would defy thee to the death,” answered Almamen, disdainfully; “but I reserve the bravest of the Moors to witness a deed worthy of the descendant of Jephtha. But hist! I hear hoofs.”
Muza listened; and his sharp ear caught a distinct ring upon the hard and rocky soil. He turned round and saw Almamen gliding away through the thick underwood, until the branches concealed his form. Presently, a curve in the path brought in view a Spanish cavalier, mounted on an Andalusian jennet: the horseman was gaily singing one of the popular ballads of the time; and, as it related to the feats of the Spaniards against the Moors, Muza’s haughty blood was already stirred, and his moustache quivered on his lip. “I will change the air,” muttered the Moslem, grasping his lance, when, as the thought crossed him, he beheld the Spaniard suddenly reel in his saddle and lay prostrate on the ground. In the same instant Almamen had darted from his hiding-place, seized the steed of the cavalier, mounted, and, ere Muza recovered from his surprise, was by the side of the Moor.
“By what harm,” said Muza, curbing his barb, “didst thou fell the Spaniard—seemingly without a blow?”
“As David felled Goliath—by the pebble and the sling,” answered Almamen, carelessly. “Now, then, spur forward, if thou art eager to see thy Leila.”
The horsemen dashed over the body of the stunned and insensible Spaniard. Tree and mountain glided by; gradually the valley vanished, and a thick forest loomed upon their path. Still they made on, though the interlaced boughs and the ruggedness of the footing somewhat obstructed their way; until, as the sun began slowly to decline, they entered a broad and circular space, round which trees of the eldest growth spread their motionless and shadowy boughs. In the midmost sward was a rude and antique stone, resembling the altar of some barbarous and departed creed. Here Almamen abruptly halted, and muttered inaudibly to himself.
“What moves thee, dark stranger?” said the Moor; “and why dost thou mutter and gaze on space?”
Almamen answered not, but dismounted, hung his bridle to a branch of a scathed and riven elm, and advanced alone into the middle of the space. “Dread and prophetic power that art within me!” said the Hebrew, aloud,—“this, then, is the spot that, by dream and vision, thou hast foretold me wherein to consummate and record the vow that shall sever from the spirit the last weakness of the flesh. Night after night hast thou brought before mine eyes, in darkness and in slumber, the solemn solitude that I now survey. Be it so! I am prepared!”
Thus speaking, he retired for a few moments into the wood: collected in his arms the dry leaves and withered branches which cumbered the desolate clay, and placed the fuel upon the altar. Then, turning to the East, and raising his hands he exclaimed, “Lo! upon this altar, once worshipped, perchance, by the heathen savage, the last bold spirit of thy fallen and scattered race dedicates, O Ineffable One! that precious offering Thou didst demand from a sire of old. Accept the sacrifice!”
As the Hebrew ended his adjuration he drew a phial from his bosom, and sprinkled a few drops upon the arid fuel. A pale blue flame suddenly leaped up; and, as it lighted the haggard but earnest countenance of the Israelite, Muza felt his Moorish blood congeal in his veins, and shuddered, though he scarce knew why. Almamen, with his dagger, severed from his head one of his long locks, and cast it upon the flame. He watched it until it was consumed; and then, with a stifled cry, fell upon the earth in a dead swoon. The Moor hastened to raise him; he chafed his hands and temples; he unbuckled the vest upon his bosom; he forgot that his comrade was a sorcerer and a Jew, so much had the agony of that excitement moved his sympathy.
It was not till several minutes had elapsed that Almamen, with a deep-drawn sigh, recovered from his swoon. “Ah, beloved one! bride of my heart!” he murmured, “was it for this that thou didst commend to me the only pledge of our youthful love? Forgive me! I restore her to the earth, untainted by the Gentile.” He closed his eyes again, and a strong convulsion shook his frame. It passed; and he rose as a man from a fearful dream, composed, and almost as it were refreshed, by the terrors he had undergone. The last glimmer of the ghastly light was dying away upon that ancient altar, and a low wind crept sighing through the trees.
“Mount, prince,” said Almamen, calmly, but averting his eyes from the altar; “we shall have no more delays.”
“Wilt thou not explain thy incantation?” asked Muza; “or is it, as my reason tells me, but the mummery of a juggler?”
“Alas! alas!” answered Almamen, in a sad and altered tone, “thou wilt soon know all.”
CHAPTER V. THE SACRIFICE
The sun was now sinking slowly through those masses of purple cloud which belong to Iberian skies; when, emerging from the forest, the travellers saw before them a small and lovely plain, cultivated like a garden. Rows of orange and citron trees were backed by the dark green foliage of vines; and these again found a barrier in girdling copses of chestnut, oak, and the deeper verdure of pines: while, far to the horizon, rose the distant and dim outline of the mountain range, scarcely distinguishable from the mellow colourings of the heaven. Through this charming spot went a slender and sparkling torrent, that collected its waters in a circular basin, over which the rose and orange hung their contrasted blossoms. On a gentle eminence above this plain, or garden, rose the spires of a convent: and, though it was still clear daylight, the long and pointed lattices were illumined within; and, as the horsemen cast their eyes upon the pile, the sound of the holy chorus—made more sweet and solemn from its own indistinctness, from the quiet of the hour, from the sudden and sequestered loveliness of that spot, suiting so well the ideal calm of the conventual life—rolled its music through the odorous and lucent air.
But that scene and that sound, so calculated to soothe and harmonise the thought, seemed to arouse Almamen into agony and passion. He smote his breast with his clenched hand; and, shrieking, rather than exclaiming, “God of my fathers! have I come too late?” buried his spurs to the rowels in the sides of his panting steed. Along the sward, through the fragrant shrubs, athwart the pebbly and shallow torrent, up the ascent to the convent, sped the Israelite. Muza, wondering and half reluctant, followed at a little distance. Clearer and nearer came the voices of the choir; broader and redder glowed the tapers from the Gothic casements: the porch of the convent chapel was reached; the Hebrew sprang from his horse. A small group of the peasants dependent on the convent loitered reverently round the threshold; pushing through them, as one frantic, Almamen entered the chapel and disappeared.
A minute elapsed. Muza was at the door; but the Moor paused irresolutely, ere he dismounted. “What is the ceremony?” he asked of the peasants.
“A nun is about to take the vows,” answered one of them.
A cry of alarm, of indignation, of terror, was heard within. Muza no longer delayed: he gave his steed to the bystanders, pushed aside the heavy curtain that screened the threshold and was within the chapel.
By the altar gathered a confused and disordered group—the sisterhood, with their abbess. Round the consecrated rail flocked the spectators, breathless and amazed. Conspicuous above the rest, on the elevation of the holy place, stood Almamen with his drawn dagger in his right hand, his left arm clasped around the form of a novice, whose dress, not yet replaced by the serge, bespoke her the sister fated to the veil; and, on the opposite side of that sister, one hand on her shoulder, the other rearing on high the sacred crucifix, stood a stern, commanding form, in the white robes of the Dominican order; it was Tomas de Torquemada.
“Avaunt, Almamen!” were the first words which reached Muza’s ear as he stood, unnoticed, in the middle of the aisle: “here thy sorcery and thine arts cannot avail thee. Release the devoted one of God!”
“She is mine! she is my daughter! I claim her from thee as a father, in the name of the great Sire of Man!”
“Seize the sorcerer! seize him!” exclaimed the Inquisitor, as, with a sudden movement, Almamen cleared his way through the scattered and dismayed group, and stood with his daughter in his arms, on the first step of the consecrated platform.
But not a foot stirred—not a hand was raised. The epithet bestowed on the intruder had only breathed a supernatural terror into the audience; and they would have sooner rushed upon a tiger in his lair, than on the lifted dagger and savage aspect of that grim stranger.
“Oh, my father!” then said a low and faltering voice, that startled Muza as a voice from the grave—“wrestle not against the decrees of Heaven. Thy daughter is not compelled to her solemn choice. Humbly, but devotedly, a convert to the Christian creed, her only wish on earth is to take the consecrated and eternal vow.”
“Ha!” groaned the Hebrew, suddenly relaxing his hold, as his daughter fell on her knees before him, “then have I indeed been told, as I have foreseen, the worst. The veil is rent—the spirit hath left the temple. Thy beauty is desecrated; thy form is but unhallowed clay. Dog!” he cried, more fiercely, glaring round upon the unmoved face of the Inquisitor, “this is thy work: but thou shalt not triumph. Here, by thine own shrine, I spit at and defy thee, as once before, amidst the tortures of thy inhuman court. Thus—thus—thus—Almamen the Jew delivers the last of his house from the curse of Galilee!”
“Hold, murderer!” cried a voice of thunder; and an armed man burst through the crowd and stood upon the platform. It was too late: thrice the blade of the Hebrew had passed through that innocent breast; thrice was it reddened with that virgin blood. Leila fell in the arms of her lover; her dim eyes rested upon his countenance, as it shone upon her, beneath his lifted vizor-a faint and tender smile played upon her lips—Leila was no more.
One hasty glance Almamen cast upon his victim, and then, with a wild laugh that woke every echo in the dreary aisles, he leaped from the place. Brandishing his bloody weapon above his head, he dashed through the coward crowd; and, ere even the startled Dominican had found a voice, the tramp of his headlong steed rang upon the air; an instant—and all was silent.
But over the murdered girl leaned the Moor, as yet incredulous of her death; her head still unshorn of its purple tresses, pillowed on his lap—her icy hand clasped in his, and her blood weltering fast over his armour. None disturbed him; for, habited as the knights of Christendom, none suspected his faith; and all, even the Dominican, felt a thrill of sympathy at his distress. How he came hither, with what object,—what hope, their thoughts were too much locked in pity to conjecture. There, voiceless and motionless, bent the Moor, until one of the monks approached and felt the pulse, to ascertain if life was, indeed, utterly gone.
The Moor at first waved him haughtily away; but, when he divined the monk’s purpose, suffered him in silence to take the beloved hand. He fixed on him his dark and imploring eyes; and when the father dropped the hand, and, gently shaking his head, turned away, a deep and agonising groan was all that the audience heard from that heart in which the last iron of fate had entered. Passionately he kissed the brow, the cheeks, the lips of the hushed and angel face, and rose from the spot.
“What dost thou here? and what knowest thou of yon murderous enemy of God and man?” asked the Dominican, approaching.
Muza made no reply, as he stalked slowly through the chapel. The audience was touched to sudden tears. “Forbear!” said they, almost with one accord, to the harsh Inquisitor; “he hath no voice to answer thee.”
And thus, amidst the oppressive grief and sympathy of the Christian throng, the unknown Paynim reached the door, mounted his steed, and as he turned once more and cast a hurried glance upon the fatal pile, the bystanders saw the large tears rolling down his swarthy cheeks.
Slowly that coal-black charger wound down the hillock, crossed the quiet and lovely garden, and vanished amidst the forest. And never was known, to Moor or Christian, the future fate of the hero of Granada. Whether he reached in safety the shores of his ancestral Africa, and carved out new fortunes and a new name; or whether death, by disease or strife, terminated obscurely his glorious and brief career, mystery—deep and unpenetrated, even by the fancies of the thousand bards who have consecrated his deeds—wraps in everlasting shadow the destinies of Muza Ben Abil Gazan, from that hour, when the setting sun threw its parting ray over his stately form and his ebon barb, disappearing amidst the breathless shadows of the forest.
CHAPTER VI. THE RETURN—THE RIOT—THE TREACHERY—AND THE DEATH
It was the eve of the fatal day on which Granada was to be delivered to the Spaniards, and in that subterranean vault beneath the house of Almamen, before described, three elders of the Jewish persuasion were met.
“Trusty and well-beloved Ximen,” cried one, a wealthy and usurious merchant, with a twinkling and humid eye, and a sleek and unctuous aspect, which did not, however, suffice to disguise something fierce and crafty in his low brow and pinched lips—“trusty and well-beloved Ximen,” said this Jew—“truly thou hast served us well, in yielding to thy persecuted brethren this secret shelter. Here, indeed, may the heathen search for us in vain! Verily, my veins grow warm again; and thy servant hungereth, and hath thirst.”
“Eat, Isaac—eat; yonder are viands prepared for thee; eat, and spare not. And thou, Elias—wilt thou not draw near the board? the wine is old and precious, and will revive thee.”
“Ashes and hyssop—hyssop and ashes, are food and drink for me,” answered Elias, with passionate bitterness; “they have rased my house—they have burned my granaries—they have molten down my gold. I am a ruined man!”
“Nay,” said Ximen, who gazed at him with a malevolent eye—for so utterly had years and sorrows mixed with gall even the one kindlier sympathy he possessed, that he could not resist an inward chuckle over the very afflictions he relieved, and the very impotence he protected—“nay, Elias, thou hast wealth yet left in the seaport towns sufficient to buy up half Granada.”
“The Nazarene will seize it all!” cried Elias; “I see it already in his grasp!”
“Nay, thinkest thou so?—and wherefore?” asked Ximen, startled into sincere, because selfish anxiety.
“Mark me! Under licence of the truce, I went, last night, to the Christian camp: I had an interview with the Christian king; and when he heard my name and faith, his very beard curled with ire. ‘Hound of Belial!’ he roared forth, ‘has not thy comrade carrion, the sorcerer Almamen, sufficiently deceived and insulted the majesty of Spain? For his sake, ye shall have no quarter. Tarry here another instant, and thy corpse shall be swinging to the winds! Go, and count over thy misgotten wealth; just census shall be taken of it; and if thou defraudest our holy impost by one piece of copper, thou shalt sup with Dives!’ Such was my mission, and mine answer. I return home to see the ashes of mine house! Woe is me!”
“And this we owe to Almamen, the pretended Jew!” cried Isaac, from his solitary but not idle place at the board. “I would this knife were at his false throat!” growled Elias, clutching his poniard with his long bony fingers.
“No chance of that,” muttered Ximen; “he will return no more to Granada. The vulture and the worm have divided his carcass between them ere this; and (he added inly with a hideous smile) his house and his gold have fallen into the hands of old childless Ximen.”
“This is a strange and fearful vault,” said Isaac, quaffing a large goblet of the hot wine of the Vega; “here might the Witch of Endor have raised the dead. Yon door—whither doth it lead?”
“Through passages none that I know of, save my master, hath trodden,” answered Ximen. “I have heard that they reach even to the Alhambra. Come, worthy Elias! thy form trembles with the cold: take this wine.”
“Hist!” said Elias, shaking from limb to limb; “our pursuers are upon us—I hear a step!”
As he spoke, the door to which Isaac had pointed slowly opened and Almamen entered the vault.
Had, indeed, a new Witch of Endor conjured up the dead, the apparition would not more have startled and appalled that goodly trio. Elias, griping his knife, retreated to the farthest end of the vault. Isaac dropped the goblet he was about to drain, and fell upon his knees. Ximen, alone, growing, if possible, a shade more ghastly—retained something of self-possession, as he muttered to himself—“He lives! and his gold is not mine! Curse him!”
Seemingly unconscious of the strange guests his sanctuary shrouded, Almamen stalked on, like a man walking in his sleep.
Ximen roused himself—softly unbarred the door which admitted to the upper apartments, and motioned to his comrades to avail themselves of the opening, but as Isaac—the first to accept the hint—crept across, Almamen fixed upon him his terrible eye, and, appearing suddenly to awake to consciousness, shouted out, “Thou miscreant, Ximen! whom hast thou admitted to the secrets of thy lord? Close the door—these men must die!”
“Mighty master!” said Ximen, calmly, “is thy servant to blame that he believed the rumour that declared thy death? These men are of our holy faith, whom I have snatched from the violence of the sacrilegious and maddened mob. No spot but this seemed safe from the popular frenzy.” “Are ye Jews?” said Almamen. “Ah, yes! I know ye now—things of the market-place and bazaar’. Oh, ye are Jews, indeed! Go, go! Leave me!”
Waiting no further licence, the three vanished; but, ere he quitted the vault, Elias turned back his scowling countenance on Almamen (who had sunk again into an absorbed meditation) with a glance of vindictive ire—Almamen was alone.
In less than a quarter of an hour Ximen returned to seek his master; but the place was again deserted.
It was midnight in the streets of Granada—midnight, but not repose. The multitude, roused into one of their paroyxsms of wrath and sorrow, by the reflection that the morrow was indeed the day of their subjection to the Christian foe, poured forth through the streets to the number of twenty thousand. It was a wild and stormy night; those formidable gusts of wind, which sometimes sweep in sudden winter from the snows of the Sierra Nevada, howled through the tossing groves, and along the winding streets. But the tempest seemed to heighten, as if by the sympathy of the elements, the popular storm and whirlwind. Brandishing arms and torches, and gaunt with hunger, the dark forms of the frantic Moors seemed like ghouls or spectres, rather than mortal men; as, apparently without an object, save that of venting their own disquietude, or exciting the fears of earth, they swept through the desolate city.
In the broad space of the Vivarrambla the crowd halted, irresolute in all else, but resolved at least that something for Granada should yet be done. They were for the most armed in their Moorish fashion; but they were wholly without leaders: not a noble, a magistrate, an officer, would have dreamed of the hopeless enterprise of violating the truce with Ferdinand. It was a mere popular tumult—the madness of a mob;—but not the less formidable, for it was an Eastern mob, and a mob with sword and shaft, with buckler and mail—the mob by which oriental empires have been built and overthrown! There, in the splendid space that had witnessed the games and tournaments of that Arab and African chivalry—there, where for many a lustrum kings had reviewed devoted and conquering armies—assembled those desperate men; the loud winds agitating their tossing torches that struggled against the moonless night.
“Let us storm the Alhambra!” cried one of the band: “let us seize Boabdil, and place him in the midst of us; let us rush against the Christians, buried in their proud repose!”
“Lelilies, Lelilies!—the Keys and the Crescent!” shouted the mob.
The shout died: and at the verge of the space was suddenly heard a once familiar and ever-thrilling voice.
The Moors who heard it turned round in amaze and awe; and beheld, raised upon the stone upon which the criers or heralds had been wont to utter the royal proclamations, the form of Almamen, the santon, whom they had deemed already with the dead.
“Moors and people of Granada!” he said, in a solemn but hollow voice, “I am with ye still. Your monarch and your heroes have deserted ye, but I am with ye to the last! Go not to the Alhambra: the fort is impenetrable—the guard faithful. Night will be wasted, and day bring upon you the Christian army. March to the gates; pour along the Vega; descend at once upon the foe!”
He spoke, and drew forth his sabre; it gleamed in the torchlight—the Moors bowed their heads in fanatic reverence—the santon sprang from the stone, and passed into the centre of the crowd.
Then, once more, arose joyful shouts. The multitude had found a leader worthy of their enthusiasm; and in regular order, they formed themselves rapidly, and swept down the narrow streets.
Swelled by several scattered groups of desultory marauders (the ruffians and refuse of the city), the infidel numbers were now but a few furlongs from the great gate, whence they had been wont to issue on the foe. And then, perhaps, had the Moors passed these gates and reached the Christian encampment, lulled, as it was, in security and sleep, that wild army of twenty thousand desperate men might have saved Granada; and Spain might at this day possess the only civilised empire which the faith of Mohammed ever founded.
But the evil star of Boabdil prevailed. The news of the insurrection in the city reached him. Two aged men from the lower city arrived at the Alhambra—demanded and obtained an audience; and the effect of that interview was instantaneous upon Boabdil. In the popular frenzy he saw only a justifiable excuse for the Christian king to break the conditions of the treaty, rase the city, and exterminate the inhabitants. Touched by a generous compassion for his subjects, and actuated no less by a high sense of kingly honor, which led him to preserve a truce solemnly sworn to, he once more mounted his cream-coloured charger, with the two elders who had sought him by his side; and, at the head of his guard, rode from the Alhambra. The sound of his trumpets, the tramp of his steeds, the voice of his heralds, simultaneously reached the multitude; and, ere they had leisure to decide their course, the king was in the midst of them.
“What madness is this, O my people?” cried Boabdil, spurring into the midst of the throng,—“whither would ye go?”
“Against the Christian!—against the Goth!” shouted a thousand voices. “Lead us on! The santon is risen from the dead, and will ride by thy right hand!”
“Alas!” resumed the king, “ye would march against the Christian king! Remember that our hostages are in his power: remember that he will desire no better excuse to level Granada with the dust, and put you and your children to the sword. We have made such treaty as never yet was made between foe and foe. Your lives, laws, wealth—all are saved. Nothing is lost, save the crown of Boabdil. I am the only sufferer. So be it. My evil star brought on you these evil destinies: without me, you may revive, and be once more a nation. Yield to fate to-day, and you may grasp her proudest awards to-morrow. To succumb is not to be subdued. But go forth against the Christians, and if ye win one battle, it is but to incur a more terrible war; if you lose, it is not honourable capitulation, but certain extermination, to which you rush! Be persuaded, and listen once again to your king.”
