warmly and bitterly; and, in the irritation of his
thoughts, strode, while he spoke, with rapid and irregular strides along
the chamber. Almamen marked his emotion with an eye and lip of rigid
composure.

"Light of the faithful," said he, when Boabdil had concluded, "the
powers above never doom man to perpetual sorrow, nor perpetual joy:
the cloud and the sunshine are alike essential to the heaven of our
destinies; and if thou hast suffered in thy youth, thou hast exhausted
the calamities of fate, and thy manhood will be glorious, and thine age
serene."

"Thou speakest as if the armies of Ferdinand were not already around my
walls," said Boabdil, impatiently.

"The armies of Sennacherib were as mighty," answered Almamen.

"Wise seer," returned the king, in a tone half sarcastic and half
solemn, "we, the Mussulmans of Spain, are not the blind fanatics of the
Eastern world. On us have fallen the lights of philosophy and science;
and if the more clear-sighted among us yet outwardly reverence the forms
and fables worshipped by the multitude, it is from the wisdom of policy,
not the folly of belief. Talk not to me, then, of thine examples of the
ancient and elder creeds: the agents of God for this world are now,
at least, in men, not angels; and if I wait till Ferdinand share the
destiny of Sennacherib, I wait only till the Standard of the Cross wave
above the Vermilion Towers."

"Yet," said Almamen, "while my lord the king rejects the fanaticism of
belief, doth he reject the fanaticism of persecution? You disbelieve
the stories of the Hebrews; yet you suffer the Hebrews themselves, that
ancient and kindred Arabian race, to be ground to the dust, condemned
and tortured by your judges, your informers, your soldiers, and your
subjects."

"The base misers! they deserve their fate," answered Boabdil, loftily.
"Gold is their god, and the market-place their country; amidst the tears
and groans of nations, they sympathise only with the rise and fall of
trade; and, the thieves of the universe! while their hand is against
every man's coffer, why wonder that they provoke the hand of every man
against their throats? Worse than the tribe of Hanifa, who eat their
god only in time of famine;--[The tribe of Hanifa worshipped a lump of
dough]--the race of Moisa--[Moses]--would sell the Seven Heavens for
the dent on the back of the date-stone."--[A proverb used in the Koran,
signifying the smallest possible trifle].

"Your laws leav