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While residing in confidential friendship with Boabdil in his retirement Aben Comixa communicated secretly with Hernando de Zafra, the secretary of Ferdinand, who resided at Granada, giving him information of all Boabdil's movements, which the secretary reported by letter to the king.
The afflicted heart of Boabdil, however, was soothed by the kindness of the Christian sovereigns, who received the hostage prince with a tenderness suited to his age and a distinction worthy of his rank.
Boabdil watched him depart; and then, clasping his hands in great emotion, exclaimed, "O lips of the dead! ye have warned me; and to you I sacrifice the friend of my youth." On quitting Boabdil the vizier, taking with him some of those foreign slaves of a seraglio, who know no sympathy with human passion outside its walls, bent his way to the palace of Muza, sorely puzzled and perplexed.
He mounted his steed, and never turned his head to look again upon the youth, but those who were near him observed the vehement struggle that shook his frame, wherein the anguish of the father had wellnigh subdued the studied equanimity of the king. Boabdil el Chico and King Ferdinand sallied forth side by side from Cordova, amidst the acclamations of a prodigious multitude.
Once undisputed monarch of the entire kingdom, he trusted to his military skill to retrieve his fortunes and drive the Christians over the frontier. Boabdil, however, had again retired to Velez el Blanco, on the confines of Murcia, where he could avail himself, in case of emergency, of any assistance or protection afforded him by the policy of Ferdinand.
As we thought of the unfortunate Boabdil, the noble queen mother Ayxa, and the beautiful Zoraya, driven into exile, giving up their beloved palace, the home of their ancestors with all its wealth and beauty, to their hated enemies, and leaving the land which had been in possession of the Moors for eight centuries, we to some extent realized the sorrow that filled the hearts of the departing exiles as they looked back for the last time on the heights of Granada and wept.
I have been trying to conjure up images of Boabdil passing in regal splendor through these courts; of his beautiful queen; of the Abencerrages, the Gomares, and the other Moorish cavaliers, who once filled these halls with the glitter of arms and the splendor of Oriental luxury; but I am continually awakened from my reveries by the jargon of an Andalusian peasant who is setting out rose-bushes, and the song of a pretty Andalusian girl who shows the Alhambra, and who is chanting a little romance that has probably been handed down from generation to generation since the time of the Moors."
Executions of the kind were matters of course on any change in Moorish government, and Boabdil was lauded for his moderation and humanity in being content with so small a sacrifice.
Boabdil smiled bitterly, saluted the royal pair with profound and silent reverence, and rode slowly on, leaving the army below, as he ascended the path that led to his new principality beyond the Alpuxarras.
"On thine own house will the thunderbolt fall, since over thine own house thou sufferest the cloud to gather," said a calm and stern voice. Boabdil started; and in the chamber stood a third person, in the shape of a woman, past middle age, and of commanding port and stature.
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