mine own tribe, know me not as
one of them? Were my despised birth and religion published, my limbs
would be torn asunder as an impostor; and all the arts of the Cabala
could not save me."

"Doubt not, great master; none in Granada, save thy faithful Ximen, know
thy secret."

"So let me dream and hope. And now to my work; for this night must be
spent in toil."

The Hebrew drew before him some of the strange instruments we have
described; and took from the recesses in the rock several scrolls.
The old man lay at his feet, ready to obey his behests; but, to all
appearance, rigid and motionless as the dead, whom his blanched hues
and shrivelled form resembled. It was, indeed, as the picture of the
enchanter at his work, and the corpse of some man of old, revived from
the grave to minister to his spells, and execute his commands.

Enough in the preceding conversation has transpired to convince the
reader, that the Hebrew, in whom he has already detected the Almamen of
the Alhambra, was of no character common to his tribe. Of a lineage that
shrouded itself in the darkness of his mysterious people, in their day
of power, and possessed of immense wealth, which threw into poverty the
resources of Gothic princes,--the youth of that remarkable man had been
spent, not in traffic and merchandise but travel and study.

As a child, his home had been in Granada. He had seen his father
butchered by the late king, Muley Abul Hassan, without other crime than
his reputed riches; and his body literally cut open, to search for the
jewels it was supposed he had swallowed. He saw, and, boy as he was he
vowed revenge. A distant kinsman bore the orphan to lands more secure
from persecution; and the art with which the Jews concealed their
wealth, scattering it over various cities, had secured to Almamen the
treasures the tyrant of Granada had failed to grasp.

He had visited the greater part of the world then known; and resided for
many years at the court of the sultan of that hoary Egypt, which still
retained its fame for abstruse science and magic lore. He had not in
vain applied himself to such tempting and wild researches; and had
acquired many of those secrets now perhaps lost for ever to the
world. We do not mean to intimate that he attained to what legend and
superstition impose upon our faith as the art of sorcery. He could
neither command the elements nor pierce the veil of the future-scatter
armies with a word, nor pass from spo