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The threshold of the tent was guarded by two men, in garments similar in hue and fashion to those of the figure who had ushered Almamen into the presence of the inquisitor, each bearing a long lance, and with a long two-edged sword by his side. This made all the inhabitants of that melancholy and ominous apartment.
Suddenly the lines of the Moors gave way, and Boabdil himself, with Muza at his right hand, and Almamen on his left, advanced towards the foot of the tower. At the same time, the Ethiopian guards, each bearing a torch, marched slowly in the rear; and from the midst of them paced the royal herald and sounded the last warning.
"Thou speakest as if the armies of Ferdinand were not already around my walls," said Boabdil, impatiently. "The armies of Sennacherib were as mighty," answered Almamen. "Wise seer," returned the king, in a tone half sarcastic and half solemn, "we, the Mussulmans of Spain, are not the blind fanatics of the Eastern world.
"Noble Muza," returned Almamen who, though indeed amazed that one whom he had imagined his victim was thus unaccountably become his judge, retained, at least, the semblance of composure "my answer is to be given only to my lord the king; it is his commands that I obey." "Thou art aware," said Muza, frowning, "that thy life is forfeited without appeal?
The last glimmer of the ghastly light was dying away upon that ancient altar, and a low wind crept sighing through the trees. "Mount, prince," said Almamen, calmly, but averting his eyes from the altar; "we shall have no more delays." "Wilt thou not explain thy incantation?" asked Muza; "or is it, as my reason tells me, but the mummery of a juggler?"
"Avaunt, Almamen!" were the first words which reached Muza's ear as he stood, unnoticed, in the middle of the aisle: "here thy sorcery and thine arts cannot avail thee. Release the devoted one of God!" "She is mine! she is my daughter! I claim her from thee as a father, in the name of the great Sire of Man!"
Ere Almamen could reply, a trumpet sounded clear and loud at the gate. "Hark!" he said, griping his dagger, and starting back to a sense of the dangers round him. "They come my pursuers and my murtherers! but these limbs are sacred from the rack."
Passions which, in their number, their nature, and their excess, animated no other champion on either side, gave to the arm of Almamen the Israelite a preternatural strength; his blows fell like rain upon the harness of the king; and the fiery eyes, the gleaming banner of the mysterious sorcerer, who had eluded the tortures of his Inquisition, who had walked unscathed through the midst of his army, whose single hand had consumed the encampment of a host, filled the stout heart of a king with a belief that he encountered no earthly foe.
Ximen roused himself softly unbarred the door which admitted to the upper apartments, and motioned to his comrades to avail themselves of the opening, but as Isaac the first to accept the hint crept across, Almamen fixed upon him his terrible eye, and, appearing suddenly to awake to consciousness, shouted out, "Thou miscreant, Ximen! whom hast thou admitted to the secrets of thy lord?
He hath urged me to reject the fears of my people, which chain my panting spirit within these walls; he hath urged me to gird on yonder shield and cimiter, and to appear in the Vivarrambla, at the head of the nobles of Granada. My heart leaps high at the thought! and if I cannot live, at least I will die a king!" "It is nobly spoken," said Almamen, coldly. "You approve, then, my design?"
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