rt confession of imaginary wealth. Not to
sell what was demanded was a crime; to sell it was a crime also. These
miserable outcasts fled to whatever secret places the vaults of their
houses or the caverns in the hills within the city could yet afford
them, cursing their fate, and almost longing even for the yoke of the
Christian bigots.

Thus passed several days; the defence of the city abandoned to its naked
walls and mighty gates. The glaring sun looked down upon closed shops
and depopulated streets, save when some ghostly and skeleton band of
the famished poor collected, in a sudden paroxysm of revenge or despair,
around the stormed and fired mansion of a detested Israelite.

At length Boabdil aroused himself from his seclusion; and Muza, to his
own surprise, was summoned to the presence of the king. He found Boabdil
in one of the most gorgeous halls of his gorgeous palace.

Within the Tower of Comares is a vast chamber, still called the hall
of the Ambassadors. Here it was that Boabdil now held his court. On the
glowing walls hung trophies and banners, and here and there an Arabian
portrait of some bearded king. By the windows, which overlooked the most
lovely banks of the Llarro, gathered the santons and alfaquis, a little
apart from the main crowd. Beyond, through half-veiling draperies, might
be seen the great court of the Alberca, whose peristyles were hung with
flowers; while, in the centre, the gigantic basin, which gives its name
to the court, caught the sunlight obliquely, and its waves glittered on
the eye from amidst the roses that then clustered over it.

In the audience hall itself, a canopy, over the royal cushions on which
Boabdil reclined, was blazoned with the heraldic insignia of Granada's
monarchs. His guard, and his mutes, and his eunuchs, and his courtiers,
and his counsellors, and his captains, were ranged in long files on
either side the canopy. It seemed the last flicker of the lamp of the
Moorish empire, that hollow and unreal pomp! As Muza approached the
monarch, he was startled by the change of his countenance: the young
and beautiful Boabdil seemed to have grown suddenly old; his eyes were
sunken, his countenance sown with wrinkles, and his voice sounded broken
and hollow on the ears of his kinsman.

"Come hither, Muza," said he; "seat thyself beside me, and listen as
thou best canst to the tidings we are about to hear."

As Muza placed himself on a cushion, a little below the king, B