ghts acquired the intensity of passions, and the conversion of the
Jewess was completed.

CHAPTER III. THE HOUR AND THE MAN

It was on the third morning after the King of Granada, reconciled to his
people, had reviewed his gallant army in the Vivarrambla; and Boabdil,
surrounded by his chiefs and nobles, was planning a deliberate and
decisive battle, by assault on the Christian camp,--when a scout
suddenly arrived, breathless, at the gates of the palace, to communicate
the unlooked-for and welcome intelligence that Ferdinand had in the
night broken up his camp, and marched across the mountains towards
Cordova. In fact, the outbreak of formidable conspiracies had suddenly
rendered the appearance of Ferdinand necessary elsewhere; and, his
intrigues with Almamen frustrated, he despaired of a very speedy
conquest of the city. The Spanish king resolved, therefore, after
completing the devastation of the Vega, to defer the formal and
prolonged siege, which could alone place Granada within his power, until
his attention was no longer distracted to other foes, and until, it must
be added, he had replenished an exhausted treasury. He had formed, with
Torquemada, a vast and wide scheme of persecution, not only against
Jews, but against Christians whose fathers had been of that race,
and who were suspected of relapsing into Judaical practices. The two
schemers of this grand design were actuated by different motives; the
one wished to exterminate the crime, the other to sell forgiveness for
it. And Torquemada connived at the griping avarice of the king, because
it served to give to himself, and to the infant Inquisition, a power and
authority which the Dominican foresaw would be soon greater even than
those of royalty itself, and which, he imagined, by scourging earth,
would redound to the interests of Heaven.

The strange disappearance of Almamen, which was distorted and
exaggerated, by the credulity of the Spaniards, into an event of the
most terrific character, served to complete the chain of evidence
against the wealthy Jews, and Jew-descended Spaniards, of Andalusia;
and while, in imagination, the king already clutched the gold of their
redemption here, the Dominican kindled the flame that was to light them
to punishment hereafter.

Boabdil and his chiefs received the intelligence of the Spanish retreat
with a doubt which soon yielded to the most triumphant delight. Boabdil
at once resumed all the energy for which, t