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"No, it can't be Zoraya!" he muttered. But the clown cast one nervous, hesitating glance up there where her troupe was working in the air. The cold sweat stood out upon him. Zoraya was not with them. His eyes sought the net. It was empty. He saw a figure clad in pink, white and gold shooting right through the net. Then, too, he saw something else.
Twisting a rope from the veils of the sultana's women in waiting, wife and son let themselves down from a window and sought refuge among their supporters. Countless quarrels followed, which ended in Boabdil's final success, and in them all, Zoraya was his firm friend and adviser.
Though childless, Zoraya had interested herself in Boabdil, the son of another wife, Ayescha, and had determined to drive Aboul Hacem from his throne, that his son might rule in his place. So formidable did the plot become that the king was forced to imprison Ayescha and Boabdil in a certain quarter of the harem; but their captivity was short, as they were soon put at liberty by friendly hands.
It was a favorite retreat of the Moorish kings to inhale the pure mountain-breezes and leave far below the din and turmoil of the city; Muley Abul Hassan had passed a day among its bowers, in company with his favorite wife Zoraya, when toward evening he heard a strange sound rising from the city, like the gathering of a storm or the sullen roar of the ocean.
Though Moslems in faith, they were all drawn to Zoraya by the tie of foreign and Christian descent, and sought to elevate her and her children to the disparagement of Ayxa la Horra and her son Boabdil.
Hence the formula of Sardou's melodramas. His heroines are almost always Sarah Bernhardts, luring, tremendous, doomed to die. Fédora, Gismonda, La Tosca, Zoraya, are but a single woman who transmigrates from play to play.
Folks sometimes break their necks trying kinkers that's not in the writings." Her answer was a merry, mocking laugh, and Zoraya ran lightly up a rope ladder to the platform where she balanced easily for another flight. "My, I wish I could do stunts like that!" breathed Teddy. "Just like a bird. La, la, la!
The sultana Zoraya and her two sons were lodged in the Alhambra, in the Tower of Comares. This was a residence in a palace, but it had proved a royal prison to the sultana Ayxa la Horra and her youthful son Boabdil.
Shivers had taught her all she knew, and Zoraya was the acknowledged queen of the lofty tumblers. But the clown half unconsciously caught his breath as the lithe form of Zoraya shot over the trapeze bar, described a graceful "two-and-a-half" in the air, and, shooting downward, hit the net with a resounding smack that caused the spectators to catch their breath sharply.
Zoraya appears first shimmering in moonlight upon the hills of Spain, dovelike in voice, serpentining in seductiveness. Next, she is allowed to hypnotise the audience while she is hypnotising the daughter of the governor. She is loved and she is lost. She curses the high tribunal of the Inquisition, a dove no longer now. And she dies upon cathedral steps, to organ music.
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