waving over his head, and he
began to doubt the predictions of the astrologers: he soon found cause,
however, to moderate his exultation. The royal train which had come to
welcome him was but scanty in number, and he missed many of his most
zealous and obsequious courtiers. He had returned, indeed, to his
kingdom, but it was no longer the devoted kingdom he had left. The story
of his vassalage to the Christian sovereigns had been made use of by his
father to ruin him with the people. He had been represented as a traitor
to his country, a renegado to his faith, and as leagued with the enemies
of both to subdue the Moslems of Spain to the yoke of Christian bondage.
In this way the mind of the public had been turned from him; the greater
part of the nobility had thronged round the throne of his father in the
Alhambra; and his mother, the resolute sultana Ayxa, with difficulty
maintained her faction in the opposite towers of the Alcazaba.

Such was the melancholy picture of affairs given to Boabdil by the
courtiers who had come forth to meet him. They even informed him that it
would be an enterprise of difficulty and danger to make his way back to
the capital and regain the little court which still remained faithful
to him in the heart of the city. The old tiger, Muley Abul Hassan, lay
couched within the Alhambra, and the walls and gates of the city were
strongly guarded by his troops. Boabdil shook his head at these tidings.
He called to mind the ill omen of his breaking his lance against the
gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which
he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which
he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have
the impiety to scoff at omens."

Boabdil approached his capital by stealth and in the night, prowling
about its walls like an enemy seeking to destroy rather than a monarch
returning to his throne. At length he seized upon a postern-gate of the
Albaycin, that part of the city which had always been in his favor; he
passed rapidly through the streets before the populace were aroused from
their sleep, and reached in safety the fortress of the Alcazaba. Here he
was received into the embraces of his intrepid mother and his favorite
wife Morayma. The transports of the latter on the safe return of her
husband were mingled with tears, for she thought of her father, Ali
Atar, who had fallen in his cause, and of her only son, who was