a nation of prophets who can
change their appearance at will and transform themselves into any shape
they like. Our advice is that we should grant Musa his demands, for men
like these we cannot resist."

The stratagem of the Arab was successful, the gates were opened, and
Merida became a captive city. The people were left their private wealth
and were free to come and go as they would, with the exception of some of
their noblest, who were to be held as hostages. Among these was the
widowed Queen Exilona.

She was still young and beautiful. By paying tribute she was allowed to
live unmolested, and in this way she passed to the second phase of her
romantic career. Arab fancy has surrounded her history with many
surprising incidents, and Lope de Vega, the Spanish dramatist, has made
her the heroine of a romantic play, but her actual history is so full of
interest that we need not draw contributions from fable or invention.

When Musa went to Syria at the command of the caliph he left his son
Abdul-Aziz as emir or governor of Spain. The new emir was a young,
handsome, and gallant man. He had won fame in Africa, and gained new
repute for wisdom and courage in Spain. The Moorish princess who had
become a Gothic queen was now a hostage in his hands, and her charms moved
his susceptible heart. His persuasive tongue and attractive person were
not without their effect upon the fair captive, who a second time lost her
heart to her captor, and agreed once more to become a bride. Her first
husband had been the king of Gothic Spain. Her second was the ruler of
Moorish Spain. She declined to yield her Christian creed, but she became
his wife and the queen of his heart, called by him Ummi-Assam, a name of
endearment common in Arab households.

Exilona was ambitious, and sought to induce her new husband to assume the
style of a king. She made him a crown of gold and precious stones which
her soft persuasion induced him to wear. She bowed in his presence as if
to a royal potentate, and to oblige the nobles to do the same she induced
him to have the door-way of his audience chamber made so low that no one
could enter it without making an involuntary bow. She even tried to
convert him to Christianity, and built a low door to her oratory, so that
any one entering would seem to bow to the cross.

These arts of the queen proved fatal to the prince whom she desired to
exalt, for this and other stories were told to the caliph, who was seeki