resolved to brave it out in the true spirit of the hero of the
enchanted house," says the narrator. So taking his lamp in his hand he
started out to make a midnight tour of the palace.

"My own shadow, cast upon the wall, began to disturb me," he
continues. "The echoes of my own footsteps along the corridors made me
pause and look around. I was traversing scenes fraught with dismal
recollections. One dark passage led down to the mosque where Yusef,
the Moorish monarch, the finisher of the Alhambra, had been basely
murdered. In another place I trod the gallery where another monarch
had been struck down by the poniard of a relative whom he had thwarted
in his love."

In a few nights, however, all this was changed; for the moon, which
had been invisible, began to "roll in full splendor above the towers,
pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall."

Says Irving, "I now felt the merit of the Arabic inscription on the
walls--'How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth
vie with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon
alabaster fountain filled with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in
her fullness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!"

"On such heavenly nights," he goes on, "I would sit for hours at my
window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the
checkered fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in
the elegant memorials around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the
clock from the distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight hour,
I have sallied out on another tour and wandered over the whole
building; but how different from my first tour! No longer dark and