f the Alhambra;
four days later, on the day of the Kings and the festival of the
Epiphany, Ferdinand and Isabella entered the city.

"The royal procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had been
consecrated as a cathedral. Here the sovereigns offered up prayers and
thanksgivings and the choir of the royal chapel chanted a triumphant
anthem, in which they were joined by the courtiers and cavaliers.
Nothing could exceed the thankfulness to God of the pious King Ferdinand
for having enabled him to eradicate from Spain the empire and name of
that accursed heathen race, and for the elevation of the Cross in that
city where the impious doctrines of Mohamed had so long been
cherished."[20]

Bells were rung and masses celebrated in gratitude throughout the
Christian world. As far away as Saint Paul's in London town, a special
Te Deum was chanted by order of the good King Henry the Seventh. Spain
had reached the summit of her glory, before which yawned the abyss.

And now in the name of Christ the Inquisition was established and one of
its chief offices founded; in His name the Jews were driven out,
Christian oaths and covenants broken, and the peaceful Moorish
inhabitants hounded from their hearths. Under Philip III, in 1609, their
last descendants were banished from the realm.

No scene of chivalry during the middle ages displayed a more brilliant
and bloody pageant than the battlefield of Granada. It was the
culmination of the work of Spain's greatest rulers,--the great crisis in
her history.

Here gallants held it little thing for ladies' sake to die,
Or for the Prophet's honour, or pride of Soldenry.
For here did Valour flourish and deeds of warlike might
Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight.[21]

Gazing over this famous plain, the Vega, that "Pearl of Price," with its
courtyards now desolate, its gardens parched and well-nigh calcined by
the sun, one recalls Voltaire's words: "Great wrongs are always recent
wounds!" and long years have passed since the iron heel of Austria set
its first impress on the soil.

James Howell, the English traveler and busybody in the capital at the
time Prince Charles went surreptitiously wooing, writes home in 1623,
after visiting Granada: "Since the expulsion of the Moors, it is also
grown thinner, and not so full of corn; for those Moors would grub up
wheat out of the very tops of the craggy hills, yet they used another
grain for their bread, so