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"Prince," said Boabdil, after a moment's pause, "yestermorn, when I sent for thee thou didst brave my orders. Even in mine own Alhambra thy minions broke out in mutiny; they surrounded the fortress in which thou wert to wait my pleasure; they intercepted, they insulted, they drove back my guards; they stormed the towers protected by the banner of thy king.
Its face was honeycombed by the usual hemispherical chippings, which somehow always reminds me of the fretted walls of the Alhambra; and it was actually hollowed out so that its upper edge overhung our heads at a height of some twenty or thirty feet; the long fringe of icicles which adorned it had made a slippery pathway of ice at two or three feet distance from the foot of the wall by the freezing water which dripped from them; and along this we crept, in hopes that none of the icicles would come down bodily.
Next to the stories of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," nothing that Irving has written has proved more popular than this volume of "The Alhambra;" and it has made the ancient ruin a place of pilgrimage for tourists in Europe ever since.
Surrounded by fruit, flowers, and dark-eyed houris, the Mohammedan but typified his idea of a higher heaven. In the Alhambra he might have closed his eyes to the outer world, and fancied that he was already in that sensuous and perpetual home which the Arabian poets so glowingly describe.
We saw the baths of Alhambra in a state very different from what they usually are actually frozen over and the Ice nearly an Inch thick. I must say I was greatly disappointed with these famed remains of Moorish Magnificence, tho' certainly when everything was kept in order, the fountains all playing, it must have been very different; at present it is falling fast to ruin.
Knight's query. 'In case of urgency he is to be fetched. His box is No. 3. 'The Alhambra Theatre! Where is that? gasped Mr. Knight. It should be explained that he held the stage in abhorrence, and, further, that the Alhambra had then only been opened for a very brief period. 'Two out, and the third at the theatre! Mr. Knight mused grimly, hastening through Seven Dials.
High above this gate was a bunch of keys cut in stone likewise, with this motto: 'Until that hand holds those keys, the Christians shall never possess this Alhambra. This was a prophecy they had, in which they animated themselves, by reason of the impossibility that ever they should meet. But see, how true there is a time for all things!
Gothic cathedrals were then standing in Spain, the Alhambra in Grenada, and, without doubt, public and private buildings of dressed stone laid in courses. While the comparison was mendacious, we can understand the desire of the conqueror to magnify his exploits.
The Master laughed a pleasant little laugh, not a harsh, sarcastic one, but playful, and tempered by so kind a look that it seemed as if every wrinkled line about his old eyes repeated, "God bless you," as the tracings on the walls of the Alhambra repeat a sentence of the Koran. I said nothing, but looked the question, What are you laughing at?
"And now," said the king, when alone with the Dominican and Almamen, "how proceed our hopes?" "Boabdil," replied the Israelite, "is aroused against both his army and their leader, Muza; the king will not quit the Alhambra; and this morning, ere I left the city, Muza himself was in the prisons of the palace." "How!" cried the king, starting from his seat.
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