Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
Leila fell in the arms of her lover; her dim eyes rested upon his countenance, as it shone upon her, beneath his lifted vizor-a faint and tender smile played upon her lips Leila was no more. One hasty glance Almamen cast upon his victim, and then, with a wild laugh that woke every echo in the dreary aisles, he leaped from the place.
He is a hound of Israel who would sell you to the best bidder. Slay him!" "Ha!" cried Almamen, "and who is my accuser?" "Thy servant-behold him!" At these words the royal guards lifted their torches, and the glare fell redly on the death-like features of Ximen. "Light of the world! there be other Jews that know him," said the traitor.
A low and deep sound, like that of subterranean thunder, boomed through the chamber; and in the same instant the wall opened, and the king beheld the long-expected figure of Almamen, the magician. But no longer was that stately form clad in the loose and peaceful garb of the Eastern santon.
"Proud heathen!" muttered Almamen to himself, "thy father filled his treasuries from the gold of many a tortured Hebrew; and even thou, too haughty to be the miser, hast been savage enough to play the bigot. Thy name is a curse in Israel; yet dost thou lust after the daughter of our despised race, and, could defeated passion sting thee, I were avenged.
When Leila stole, at last, to the room in which Almamen was hid, she found him, stretched on his mantle, in a deep sleep. Exhausted by all he had undergone, and his rigid nerves, as it were, relaxed by the sudden softness of that interview with his child, the slumber of that fiery wanderer was as calm as an infant's.
"Ha!" cried Almamen, for it was indeed the Israelite; "by thy black charger, and the tone of thy haughty voice, I know the hero of Granada. Rather, Muza Ben Abil Gazan, why art thou absent from the last hold of the Moorish empire?" "Dost thou pretend to read the future, and art thou blind to the present? Granada has capitulated to the Spaniard.
Leila still paused for a moment; and then, as if recovering her self-possession, said, aloud and distinctly, "Man deserts me; but I will not forget that God is over all." Shaking off the hand of the Spaniard, she continued, "Lead on; I follow thee!" and left the tent with a steady and even majestic step. "And now," said the king, when alone with the Dominican and Almamen, "how proceed our hopes?"
"A sturdy mendicant this, by the Virgin!" muttered the king; and then, speaking aloud, "Give me the paper, I will scan it." Running his eyes hastily over the words, Ferdinand paused a moment, and then drew towards him the implements of writing, signed the scroll, and returned it to Almamen. The Israelite kissed it thrice with oriental veneration, and replaced it in his breast.
"Yet what is she to thee?" asked Muza, suspiciously. "Thou shalt learn full soon. Let us on." So saying, Almamen sprang forward with a vigour which the excitement of his mind supplied to the exhaustion of his body. Muza wonderingly pushed on his charger, and endeavoured to draw his mysterious guide into conversation: but Almamen scarcely heeded him.
"Through passages none that I know of, save my master, hath trodden," answered Ximen. "I have heard that they reach even to the Alhambra. Come, worthy Elias! thy form trembles with the cold: take this wine." "Hist!" said Elias, shaking from limb to limb; "our pursuers are upon us I hear a step!" As he spoke, the door to which Isaac had pointed slowly opened and Almamen entered the vault.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking