daughter gone.

CHAPTER V. IN THE FERMENT OF GREAT EVENTS THE DREGS RISE.

The Israelites did not limit their struggles to the dark conspiracy to
which allusion has been made. In some of the Moorish towns that
revolted from Ferdinand, they renounced the neutrality they had hitherto
maintained between Christian and Moslem. Whether it was that they were
inflamed by the fearful and wholesale barbarities enforced by Ferdinand
and the Inquisition against their tribe, or whether they were stirred up
by one of their own order, in whom was recognised the head of their
most sacred family; or whether, as is most probable, both causes
combined--certain it is, that they manifested a feeling that was
thoroughly unknown to the ordinary habits and policy of that peaceable
people. They bore great treasure to the public stock--they demanded
arms, and, under their own leaders, were admitted, though with much
jealousy and precaution, into the troops of the arrogant and disdainful
Moslems.

In this conjunction of hostile planets, Ferdinand had recourse to his
favourite policy of wile and stratagem. Turning against the Jews the
very treaty Almamen had once sought to obtain in their favour, he caused
it to be circulated, privately, that the Jews, anxious to purchase their
peace with him, had promised to betray the Moorish towns, and Granada
itself into his hands. The paper, which Ferdinand himself had signed in
his interview with Almamen, and of which, on the capture of the Hebrew,
he had taken care to repossess himself, he gave to a spy whom he sent,
disguised as a Jew, into one of the revolted cities.

Private intelligence reached the Moorish ringleader of the arrival of
this envoy. He was seized, and the document found on his person. The
form of the words drawn up by Almamen (who had carefully omitted mention
of his own name--whether that which he assumed, or that which, by birth,
he should have borne) merely conveyed the compact, that if by a Jew,
within two weeks from the date therein specified, Granada was delivered
to the Christian king, the Jews should enjoy certain immunities and
rights.

The discovery of this document filled the Moors of the city to which
the spy had been sent with a fury that no words can describe. Always
distrusting their allies, they now imagined they perceived the sole
reason of their sudden enthusiasm, of their demand for arms. The mob
rose: the principal Jews were seized and massacred without tria