bigots.

Thus passed several days; the defence of the city abandoned to its naked
walls and mighty gates. The glaring sun looked down upon closed shops
and depopulated streets, save when some ghostly and skeleton band of the
famished poor collected, in a sudden paroxysm of revenge or despair,
around the stormed and fired mansion of a detested Israelite.

At length Boabdil aroused himself from his seclusion; and Muza, to his
own surprise, was summoned to the presence of the king. He found Boabdil
in one of the most gorgeous halls of his gorgeous palace.

Within the Tower of Comares is a vast chamber, still called the hall of
the Ambassadors. Here it was that Boabdil now held his court. On the
glowing walls hung trophies and banners, and here and there an Arabian
portrait of some bearded king. By the windows, which overlooked the most
lovely banks of the Llarro, gathered the santons and alfaquis, a little
apart from the main crowd. Beyond, through half-veiling draperies, might
be seen the great court of the Alberca, whose peristyles were hung with
flowers; while, in the centre, the gigantic basin, which gives its name
to the court, caught the sunlight obliquely, and its waves glittered on
the eye from amidst the roses that then clustered over it.

In the audience hall itself, a canopy, over the royal cushions on which
Boabdil reclined, was blazoned with the heraldic insignia of Granada's
monarchs. His guard, and his mutes, and his eunuchs, and his courtiers,
and his counsellors, and his captains, were ranged in long files on
either side the canopy. It seemed the last flicker of the lamp of the
Moorish empire, that hollow and unreal pomp! As Muza approached the
monarch, he was startled by the change of his countenance: the young and