him to enter into an
amicable coalition for the good of the country.

The heart of Boabdil shrank from all connection with a man who had
sought his life, and whom he regarded as the murderer of his kindred. He
accepted one half of the kingdom as an offer from the nation, not to be
rejected by a prince who scarcely held possession of the ground he stood
on. He asserted, nevertheless, his absolute right to the whole, and only
submitted to the partition out of anxiety for the present good of his
people. He assembled his handful of adherents and prepared to hasten
to Loxa. As he mounted his horse to depart, Hamet Aben Zarrax stood
suddenly before him. "Be true to thy country and thy faith," cried he;
"hold no further communication with these Christian dogs. Trust not the
hollow-hearted friendship of the Castilian king; he is mining the
earth beneath thy feet. Choose one of two things: be a sovereign or a
slave--thou canst not be both."

Boabdil ruminated on these words; he made many wise resolutions, but
he was prone always to act from the impulse of the moment, and was
unfortunately given to temporize in his policy. He wrote to Ferdinand,
informing him that Loxa and certain other cities had returned to their
allegiance, and that he held them as vassal to the Castilian Crown,
according to their convention. He conjured him, therefore, to refrain
from any meditated attack, offering free passage to the Spanish army to
Malaga or any other place under the dominion of his uncle.*

* Zurita, lib. 20, c. 68.

Ferdinand turned a deaf ear to the entreaty and to all professions
of friendship and vassalage. Boabdil was nothing to him but as an
instrument for stirring up the flames of civil war. He now insisted
that he had entered into a hostile league with his uncle, and had
consequently forfeited all claims to his indulgence; and he prosecuted
with the greater earnestness his campaign against the city of Loxa.

"Thus," observes the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida, "thus did this most
sagacious sovereign act upon the text in the eleventh chapter of the
evangelist St. Luke, that 'a kingdom divided against itself cannot
stand.' He had induced these infidels to waste and destroy themselves
by internal dissensions, and finally cast forth the survivor, while the
Moorish monarchs by their ruinous contests made good the old Castilian
proverb in cases of civil war, 'El vencido vencido, y el vencidor
perdido' (the conquered conquered