The Moorish king entered Cordova with his little train of faithful knights and escorted by all the nobility and chivalry of the Castilian court. He was conducted with great state and ceremony to the royal palace. When he came in presence of Ferdinand he knelt and offered to kiss his hand, not merely in homage as his subject, but in gratitude for his liberty. Ferdinand declined the token of vassalage, and raised him graciously from the earth. An interpreter began, in the name of Boabdil, to laud the magnanimity of the Castilian monarch and to promise the most implicit submission. “Enough!” said King Ferdinand, interrupting the interpreter in the midst of his harangue: “there is no need of these compliments. I trust in his integrity that he will do everything becoming a good man and a good king.” With these words he received Boabdil el Chico into his royal friendship and protection. CHAPTER XXI. RETURN OF BOABDIL FROM CAPTIVITY. 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. When the Moorish king beheld his son, his only child, who was to remain in his stead a sort of captive in a hostile land, he folded him in his arms and wept over him. “Woe the day that I was born!” exclaimed he, “and evil the stars that presided at my birth! Well was I called El Zogoybi, or the Unlucky, for sorrow is heaped upon me by my father, and sorrow do I transmit to my son!” The afflicted heart of Boabdil, however, was soothed by the kindness of the Christian sovereigns, who received the hostage prince with a tenderness suited to his age and a distinction worthy of his rank. They delivered him in charge to the worthy alcayde Martin de Alarcon, who had treated his father with such courtesy during his confinement in the castle of Porcuna, giving orders that after the departure of the latter his son should be entertained with great honor and princely attention in the same fortress. On the 2d of September a guard of honor assembled at the gate of the mansion of Boabdil to escort him to the frontiers of his kingdom. He pressed his child to his heart at parting, but he uttered not a word, for there were many Christian eyes to behold his emotion. He mounted his steed, and never turned his head to look again upon the youth, but those who were near him observed the vehement struggle that shook his frame, wherein the anguish of the father had wellnigh subdued the studied equanimity of the king.