“By the tomb of the prophet!” said one
of the Zegris, as he quitted the hall, “the
timid Boabdil suspects our Ben Abil Gazan. I learned
of this before.”
“Hush!” said another of the band; “let
us watch. If the king touch a hair of Muza’s
head, Allah have mercy on his sins!”
Meanwhile, the vizier, in silence, showed to Muza
the firman and the signet; and then, without venturing
to announce the place to which he was commissioned
to conduct the prince, besought him to follow at once.
Muza changed colour, but not with fear.
“Alas!” said he, in a tone of deep sorrow,
“can it be that I have fallen under my royal
kinsman’s suspicion or displeasure? But
no matter; proud to set to Granada an example of valour
in her defence, be it mine to set, also, an example
of obedience to her king. Go on—I will
follow thee. Yet stay, you will have no need
of guards; let us depart by a private egress:
the Zegris might misgive, did they see me leave the
palace with you at the very time the army are assembling
in the Vivarrambla, and awaiting my presence.
This way.”
Thus saying, Muza, who, fierce as he was, obeyed every
impulse that the oriental loyalty dictated from a
subject to a king, passed from the hall to a small
door that admitted into the garden, and in thoughtful
silence accompanied the vizier towards the Alhambra.
As they passed the copse in which Muza, two nights
before, had met with Almamen, the Moor, lifting his
head suddenly, beheld fixed upon him the dark eyes
of the magician, as he emerged from the trees.
Muza thought there was in those eyes a malign and
hostile exultation; but Almamen, gravely saluting him,
passed on through the grove: the prince did not
deign to look back, or he might once more have encountered
that withering gaze.
“Proud heathen!” muttered Almamen to himself,
“thy father filled his treasuries from the gold
of many a tortured Hebrew; and even thou, too haughty
to be the miser, hast been savage enough to play the
bigot. Thy name is a curse in Israel; yet dost
thou lust after the daughter of our despised race,
and, could defeated passion sting thee, I were avenged.
Ay, sweep on, with thy stately step and lofty crest-thou
goest to chains, perhaps to death.”
As Almamen thus vented his bitter spirit, the last
gleam of the white robes of Muza vanished from his
gaze. He paused a moment, turned away abruptly,
and said, half aloud, “Vengeance, not on one
man only, but a whole race! Now for the Nazarene.”
The royal tent of Spain.—The king and the
Dominican—the visitor and the
hostage.
Our narrative now summons us to the Christian army,
and to the tent in which the Spanish king held nocturnal
counsel with some of his more confidential warriors
and advisers. Ferdinand had taken the field with
all the pomp and circumstance of a tournament rather
than of a campaign; and his pavilion literally blazed
with purple and cloth of gold.
