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The non-performance of the promises made by the grantees, at length induced the Congress of New Granada to annul all privileges conferred on individuals for the purpose of opening a canal, or constructing a railroad across the isthmus, and notifying that the project should be left open for general competition.
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.
Instead, not being a man to do things by halves, he equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments, got together the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly presented himself at Granada in his full dignity.
When this was done, it is said that he died in a most edifying manner. Very few of Cano's architectural works remain; a few drawings of this sort are in the Louvre which are simple and elegant in style. The finest carving by him is a small figure of the Virgin, now in the Cathedral of Granada.
In the month of August a noble Moor, of the race of the Abencerrages, arrived with a splendid retinue at the city of Cordova, bringing with him the son of Boabdil el Chico and other of the noble youth of Granada as hostages for the fulfilment of the terms of ransom.
In the mean time he sent out scouts to post themselves upon different heights and look out for the approach of the enemy. All day they remained concealed in the ravine and for a great part of the following night; not a Moor, however, was to be seen, excepting now and then a peasant returning from his labor or a solitary muleteer hastening toward Granada.
And now he stands beneath the wall and sees before him rise The object of the great campaign, his valor's priceless prize; He dreams one moment that he holds her subject to his arms, He dreams that to Granada he flies from war's alarms, Each battlement he fondly eyes, each bastion grim and tall, And in fancy sees the crescents rise above the Christian wall.
And then to lean over the parapet of the Tocador and gaze down upon Granada and the Albaycin spread out like a map below; all buried in deep repose; the white palaces and convents sleeping in the moonshine, and beyond all these the vapory vega fading away like a dreamland in the distance.
They were but a boy and girl together, loving each other in the tender first love of early youth, for the victor of the day, the subduer of the Moors, the man who had won back Granada, who was already High Admiral of Spain, and who in some ten months from that time was to win a decisive battle of the world at Lepanto, was a stripling of twenty-three summers and he had first seen Dolores when he was twenty and she seventeen, and now it was nearly two years since they had met.
At the gate of old Granada, when all its bolts are barred, At twilight at the Vega gate there is a trampling heard; There is a trampling heard, as of horses treading slow, And a weeping voice of women, and a heavy sound of woe. "What tower is fallen, what star is set, what chief come these bewailing?" "A tower is fallen, a star is set. Alas! alas for Celin!"
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