literally the effect of enchantment when

AMBITION DISTORTED INTO VICE BY LAW. the rock yawned, and discovered a circular cavern, lighted with brazen lamps, On descending a broad flight of stairs and spread with hangings and cushions of from the apartment, the Hebrew encoun- thick furs. Upon rude and seemingly natered an old man, habited in loose gar-tural pillars of rock various antique and ments of silk and fur, upon whose wither-rusty arms were suspended; in large ed and wrinkled face life seemed scarcely niches were deposited scrolls, clasped and to struggle against the advance of death, bound with iron; and a profusion of so haggard, wan, and corpselike was its strange and uncouth instruments and maaspect. chines (in which modern science might, Ximen," said the Israelite, "trusty perhaps, discover the tools of chymical and beloved servant, follow me to the ca-invention), gave a magical and ominous vern." He did not tarry for an answer, aspect to the wild abode. but continued his way with rapid strides The Hebrew cast himself on a couch through various courts and alleys, till he of furs; and, as the old man entered and came at length into a narrow, dark, and closed the door, "Ximen," said he "fill damp gallery, that seemed cut from the out wine-it is a soothing counsellor, and living rock. At its entrance was a strong I need it."

grate, which gave way to the Hebrew's Extracting from one of the recesses of touch upon the spring, though the united the cavern a flask and goblet, Ximen strength of a hundred men could not have proffered to his lord a copious draught of moved it from its hinge. Taking up a the sparkling vintage of the Vega, which brazen lamp that burnt in a niche within seemed to invigorate and restore him. it, the Hebrew paused impatiently till the "Old man," said he, concluding the feeble steps of the old man reached the potation with a deep-drawn sigh, "fill to spot; and then, reclosing the grate, pur-thyself-drink till thy veins feel young." sued his winding way for a considerable Ximen obeyed the mandate but imperdistance, till he stopped suddenly by a fectly; the wine just touched his lips, and part of the rock which seemed in no re-the goblet was put aside. spect different from the rest; and so art- "Ximen," resumed the Israelite, "how fully contrived and concealed was the door many of our race have been butchered which he now opened, and so suddenly by the avarice of the Moorish kings since did it yield to his hand, that it appeared first thou didst set foot within the city?"

VOL.3-15-1

"Three thousand-the number was turned back the stream of the conversacompleted last winter by the order of tion. Jusef, the vizier; and their goods and cof- "You resolve, then, upon prosecuting fers are transformed into shafts and cime- vengeance on the Moors, at whatsoever ters against the dogs of Galilee." hazard of the broken faith of these Na

"Three thousand; no more! three thou- zarenes ?" sand only! I would the number had been "Ay, the vapour of human blood hath tripled, for the interest is becoming due!" risen unto heaven, and, collected into "My brother, and my son, and my thunder-clouds, hangs over the doomed grandson are among the number," said and guilty city. And now, Ximen. I the old man, and his face grew yet more have a new cause for hatred to the Moors: deathlike. the flower that I have reared and watch

"Their monuments shall be in heca-ed, the spoiler hath sought to pluck it tombs of their tyrants. They shall not, at from my hearth. Leila-thou hast guardleast, call the Jews niggards in revenge."led her ill, Ximen; and wert thou not en"But pardon me, noble chief of a fallen deared to me by thy very malice and people; thinkst thou we shall be less de-vices, the rising sun should have seen thy spoiled and trodden under foot by yon trunk on the waters of the Darro." haughty and stiffnecked Nazarenes than "My lord," replied Ximen, "if thou, by the Arabian misbelievers ?" the wisest of our people, canst not guard "Accursed in truth, are both," return- a maiden from love, how canst thou see ed the Hebrew; "but the one promises crime in the dull eyes and numbed more fairly than the other. I have seen senses of a miserable old man ?" this Ferdinand and his proud queen; they The Israelite did not answer or seem are pledged to accord us rights and immu- to hear this deprecatory remonstrance. nities we have never known before in Eu. He appeared rather occupied with his rope." own thoughts; and, speaking to himself. "And they will not touch our traffic, he uttered, "It must be so: the sacrifice our gold?" is hard-the danger great; but here, at "Out on thee!" cried the fiery Israel- least, it is more immediate. It shall be ite, stamping on the ground. "I would done. Ximen," he continued, speaking all the gold of earth were sunk into the aloud, "dost thou feel assured that even everlasting pit! It is this mean, and mis- mine own countrymen, mine own tribe, erable, and loathsome leprosy of avarice know me not as one of them? Were my that gnaws away from our whole race despised birth and religion published, my the heart, the soul, nay, the very form of limbs would be torn asunder as an imposman! Many a time, when I have scen tor, and all the arts of the Cabala could the lordly feature of the descendants of not save me."

Solomon and Joshua (features that stamp "Doubt not, great master; none in the nobility of the eastern world born to Greneda, save thy faithful Ximen, know mastery and command) sharpened and thy secret."

furrowed by petty cares; when I have "So let me dream and hope. And now looked upon the frame of the strong man to my work, for this night must be spent bowed, like a crawling reptile, to some in toil."

huckstering bargainer of silks and un- The Hebrew drew before him some of gents; and heard the voice that should be the strange instruments we have deraising the battle-cry smoothed into fawn- scribed, and took from the recesses in the ing accents of base fear or yet baser hope, rock several scrolls. The old man lay at I have asked myself if I am indeed of the his feet, ready to obey his behests, but, to blood of Israel! and thanked the great Je- all appearance, rigid and motionless as hovah that he hath spared me, at least, the dead, whom his blanched hues and the curse that hath blasted my brother-shrivelled form resembled. It was, inhood into usurers and slaves!" deed, as the picture of the enchanter at Ximen prudently forbore an answer to his work, and the corpse of some man of enthusiasm which he neither shared nor old, revived from the grave to minister to understood; but, after a brief silence, his spells and execute his commands.

Enough in the preceding conversation believed they were the masters of the nahas transpired to convince the reader ture to which they were, in reality, but that the Hebrew, in whom he has already erratic and wild disciples. Of such was detected the Almamen of the Alhambra, the student in that grim cavern. He knew was of no character common to his tribe. himself an imposter, but yet he was, in Of a lineage that shrouded itself in the some measure, the dupe, partly of hist darkness of his mysterious people, in their own bewildered wisdom, partly of the day of power, and possessed of immense fervour of an imagination exceedingly wealth, which threw into poverty the re-highwrought and enthusiastic. His own sources of Gothic princes, the youth of gorgeous vanity intoxicated him; and, if that remarkable man had been spent, not it be a historical truth that the kings of in traffic and merchandise, but travel and the ancient world, blinded by their own. study. power, had moments in which they beAs a child, his home had been in Grena-lieved themselves more than men, it is not da. He had seen his father butchered by incredible that sages, elevated even above the late king, Muley Abul Hassan, with-kings, should conceive a phrensy as weak, out other crime than his reputed riches; or, it may be, as sublime, and imagine and his body literally cut open to search that they did not claim in vain the awful for the jewels it was supposed he had dignity with which the faith of the multiswallowed. He saw, and, boy as he was, tude invested their faculties and gifts. he vowed revenge. A distant kinsman But, the accident of birth, which exclubore the orphan to lands more secure ded him from the field for energy and amfrom persecution; and the art with which bition, had thus directed the powerful the Jews conceal their wealth, scattering mind of Almamen to contemplation and it over various cities, had secured to Al-study, nature had never intended passions mamen the treasures the tyrant of Grena- so fierce for the calm though visionary dá had failed to grasp. pursuits to which he was addicted. Amid He had visited the greater part of the scrolls and seers, he had pined for action world then known, and resided for many and glory; and, baffled in all wholesome years in the court of the sultan of that egress by the universal exclusion which, hoary Egypt which still retained its fame in every land and from every faith, met ' for abstruse science and magic lore. He the religion he belonged to, the faculties had not in vain applied himself to such within him ran riot, producing gigantic tempting and wild researches, and had but baseless schemes, which, as one after acquired many of those secrets now, per- the other crumbled away, left behind feelhaps, lost forever to the world. We do ings of dark misanthropy and intense renot mean to intimate that he attained to venge.

what legend and superstition impose upon Perhaps, had his religion been prosperour faith as the art of sorcery. He could ous and powerful, he might have been a neither command the elements nor pierce skeptic; persecution and affliction made the veil of the future; scatter armies with him a fanatic. Yet, true to that promia word, nor pass from spot to spot by the nent characteristic of the old Hebrew utterance of a charmed formula. But men race which made them look to a Messiah who, for ages, had passed their lives in only as a warrior and a prince, and which attempting all the effects that can aston- taught them to associate all their hopes ish and awe the vulgar, could not but and schemes with worldly victories and learn some secrets which all the more power, Almamer desired rather to adsober wisdom of modern times would vance than to obey his religion. He cared search ineffectually to solve or to revive. little for its precepts, he thought little for And many of such arts, acquired mechan- its doctrines; but, night and day, he reically (their invention often the work of a volved his schemes for its earthly restorachymical accident), those who attained to tion and triumph.

them could not always explain nor ac- At that time the Moors in Spain were count for the phenomena they created, so far more deadly persecutors of the Jews that the mightiness of their own decep- than the Christians were. Amid the Spantions deceived themselves; and they often ish cities on the coast, that merchant

tribe had formed commercial connexions curse of circumstance had humbled, not with the Christians, sufficiently beneficial, reconciled him to the dust. He had the both to individuals as to communities, to crawl of the reptile; he had, also,, its poiobtain them not only toleration, but some-son and its fangs.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LION IN THE NET.

thing of personal friendship, wherever men bought and sold in the market-place. And the gloomy fanaticism which afterward stained the fame of the great Ferdinand, and introduced the horrors of the Inquisition. had not yet made itself more than fitfully visible. But the Moors had treated this unhappy people with a wholesale and relentless barbarity. At Grena- It was the next night, not long before da, under the reign of the fierce father of daybreak, that the King of Grenada abBoabdil "that king with the tiger heart" ruptly summoned to his council Jusef, his -the Jews had been literally placed with- vizier. The old man found Boabdil in out the pale of humanity; and, even un- great disorder and excitement; but he alder the mild and contemplative Boabdil most deemed his sovereign mad when he himself, they had been plundered without received from him the order to seize upmercy, and, if suspected of secreting their on the person of Muza Ben Abil Gazan, treasures, massacred without scruple; the and to lodge him in the strongest dunwants of the state continued their unre-geon of the Vermillion Tower. Presu lenting accusers-their wealth their inex-ming upon Boabdil's natural mildness, the piable crime. vizler ventured to remonstrate; to sug It was in the mids of these barbarities gest the danger of laying violent hands that Almamen, for the first time since the upon a chief so beloved; and to inquire day when the death-shriek of his agon- what cause should be assigned for the ized father rung in his ears, suddenly re- outrage." turned to Grenada. He saw the unmitigated miseries of his brethren, and he remembered and repeated his vow.

His name changed,-his kindred dead, none remembered, in the mature Almamen, the beardless child of Issacher the Jew. He had long, indeed, deemed it advisable to disguise his faith; and was known throughout the African kingdoms but as the potent santon or the wise magi

cian.

The veins swelled like cords upon Boabdil's brow as he listened to the vi zier, and his answer was short and per emptory.

"Am I yet a king, that I should fear a subject or excuse my will? Thou hast my orders; there are my signet and the fir man; obedience or the bowstring!"

Never before had Boabdil so resembled his dread father in speech and air; the vizier trembled to the soles of his feet, This fame soon lifted him, in Grenada, and withdrew in silence. Boabdil watchhigh in the councils of the court. Admit-ed him depart; and then, clasping his ted to the intimacy of Muley Hassan, with hands in great emotion, "Oh, lips of the Boabdil, and the queen mother, he had con- dead! ye have warned me; and to you spired against that monarch; and had I sacrifice the friend of my youth." lived, at least, to avenge his father upon On leaving Boabdil, the vizier, taking the royal murderer. He was no less inti- with him some of those foreign slaves of mate with Boabdil; but, steeled against a seraglio who know no sympathy with fellowship or affection for all men out of the pale of his faith, he saw, in the confidence of the king, only the blindness of a victim.

human passion outside its walls. bent his way to the palace of Muza, sorely puzzled and perplexed. He did not, however, like to venture upon the hazard of the Serpent as he was, he cared not through alarm it might occasion throughout the what mire of treachery and fraud he neighborhood, if he endeavoured, at so trailed his baleful folds, so that, at last, he unseasonable an hour, to force an encould spring upon his prey. Nature had trance. He resolved, rather, with his given him sagacity and strength. The train, to wait at a little distance, till, with

841

the growing dawn, the gates should be tal loyalty dictated from a subject to a unclosed and the inmates of the palace king, passed from the hall to a small door astir. Accordingly, cursing his stars and won-thoughtful silence accompanied the vizier that admitted into the garden, and in dering at his mission, Jusef and his silent towards the Alhambra. As they passed and ominous attendants concealed them- the copse in which Muza, two nights beselves in a small copse adjoining the pal-fore, had met with Almamen, the Moor ace until the daylight fairly broke over lifting his head suddenly, beheld fixed upthe awakened city. He then passed into on him the dark eyes ot the magician as the palace, and was conducted to a hall he emerged from the trees. where he found the renowned Moslem thought there was in those eyes a malign Muza already astir, and conferring with some and hostile exultation, but Almamen, zegri captains upon the tactics of a sor-gravely saluting him, passed on through tie designed for that day. the grove: the prince did not deign to

It was with so evident a reluctance and look back, or he might once more have apprehension that Jusef approached the encountered that withering gaze. prince, that the fierce and quicksighted zegris instantly suspected some evil inten- to himself, "Thy father filled his trea"Proud heathen!" muttered Almamen tion in his visit; and when Muza, in sur-sures from the gold of many a tortured prise yielded to the prayer of the vizier Hebrew; and even thou, too haughty to for a private audience, it was with scowl- be the miser, hast been savage enough to ing brows and sparkling eyes that the play the bigot. Thy name is a curse in Moorish warriors left the darling of the Israel; yet dost thou lust after the daughnobles alone with the messenger of their ter of our despised race, and, could deking.

said Ay, sweep on, with thy stately step, and feated passion sting thee, I were avenged. hall, lofty crest; thou goest to chains perhaps

By the tomb of the prophet!" one of the zegris, as he left the "the timid Boabdil suspects our Ben Abil to death. Gazan. I learned of this before."

"Hush!" said another of the band; it, the last gleam of the white robes of As Almamen thus vented his bitter spir"let us watch. If the king touch a hair Muza vanished from his gaze. He paused of Muza's beard, Allah have mercy on a moment, turned away abruptly. and his sins!" Meanwhile the vizier, in silence, show-man only, but a whole race! Now for said, half aloud, "Vengeance, not on one ed to Muza the firman and the signet; the Nazarene."

and then, without venturing to announce the place to which he was commissioned to conduct the prince, besought him to follow him at once. Muza changed colour, but not with fear.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DOMINICIAN.-THE VISITER AND

THE HOSTAGE.

"Alas!" said he in a tone of deep sor-THE ROYAL TENT OF SPAIN—the king and row, "can it be that I have fallen under my royal kinsman's suspicion or displeasure? But no matter; proud to set to Grenada an example of valour in her defence, be it mine to set, also, an example Christian army, and to the tent in which Our narrative now summons us to the of obedience to her king. Go on; I will the Spanish king held nocturnal counsel follow thee. Yet stay, you will have no with some of his more confidential warrineed of guards; let us depart by a pri-ors and advisers. Ferdinand had taken vate egress: the zegris might misgive did the field with all the pomp and circumsee me leave the palace with you stance of a tournament rather than of a at the very time the army are assembling campaign; and his pavilion literally blazed in the vivarambla and awaiting my pre- with purple and cloth of gold. sence. This way." Thus saying Muza, who, fierce as he which were scattered maps and papers. The king sat at the head of a table on obeyed every impulse that the orien. His black hair, richly perfumed and anoint.

they

was