CHAPTER III.

THE HOUR AND THE MAN

It was on the third morning after the King of Granada, reconciled to his
people, had reviewed his gallant army in the Vivarrambla; and Boabdil,
surrounded by his chiefs and nobles, was planning a deliberate and
decisive battle, by assault on the Christian camp,--when a scout suddenly
arrived, breathless, at the gates of the palace, to communicate the
unlooked-for and welcome intelligence that Ferdinand had in the night
broken up his camp, and marched across the mountains towards Cordova. In
fact, the outbreak of formidable conspiracies had suddenly rendered the
appearance of Ferdinand necessary elsewhere; and, his intrigues with
Almamen frustrated, he despaired of a very speedy conquest of the city.
The Spanish king resolved, therefore, after completing the devastation of
the Vega, to defer the formal and prolonged siege, which could alone
place Granada within his power, until his attention was no longer
distracted to other foes, and until, it must be added, he had replenished
an exhausted treasury. He had formed, with Torquemada, a vast and wide
scheme of persecution, not only against Jews, but against Christians
whose fathers had been of that race, and who were suspected of relapsing
into Judaical practices. The two schemers of this grand design were
actuated by different motives; the one wished to exterminate the crime,
the other to sell forgiveness for it. And Torquemada connived at the
griping avarice of the king, because it served to give to himself, and to
the infant Inquisition, a power and authority which the Dominican foresaw
would be soon greater even than those of royalty itself, and which, he
imagined, by scourging earth, would redound to the interests of Heaven.