She went, therefore, fancy free and untrammeled even by the knowledge of her father’s wishes, on a visit to her kinsfolk of Granada, entirely unsuspicious that any secret of state policy was connected with the visit to that land of romance and glory, of beauty and adventure, which was to her one long holyday. Of all her train, indeed, there was but one who was privy to the Sultan’s secret wishes old Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali, the eldest of the sovereign’s councillors, like some, himself a traveler, and like himself, imbued with notions far more liberal than those of his time or country. To him it was entrusted, therefore, while seemingly inattentive to all that was passing, to observe strictly every shadow which might indicate whence the wind was about to blow—to take especial note of Boabdil’s conduct and wishes, and, above all, to omit no opportunity of discovering how the fair Ayesha might stand affected toward her royal cousin. Gaily and happily had passed the days, the weeks, the months—it was still truce with the Spaniard, and days and nights were consumed in tilts, in tournaments, in hawking-parties on the beautiful green meadows of the Vega, beside the bright and brimful streams, adjuncts so necessary to that royal pastime, that it was known of old as the “Mystery of Rivers”—hunting-parties in the wild gorges of the Alpuxawa mountains, banquets at high noon, and festivals beneath the glimmering twilight, beneath the full-orbed moon, that life was, indeed, one long and joyous holyday. Boabdil was, in truth, of a man a right fair and goodly specimen—tall, finely formed, eminently handsome, graceful and affable in manners, kindly in heart and disposition, not untinctured with arts and letters, nor deficient in any essential which should become a gentle cavalier—as a monarch, when surrounded by his court, and seated in his place of state in the Hall of Lyons, of a truth he was a right royal king—as a warrior, in the tilt-yard his skill, his horsemanship, his management of all weapons, were the admiration of all beholders. In the field his gallantry and valor were incontestable. What, then, was wanting that Boabdil was not a perfect man, a real cavalier, a very king? Purpose, energy, will—will that must have its way, and cannot be denied, much less defeated. A prince of a quiet realm, in tranquil times he had lived honored and happy, he had been gathered to his fathers among the tears of his people, he had lived in the memory of men as a good man, an admirable king, the father of his people. Fallen upon evil times, thrust into an eminence for which he not only was, but felt himself to be unfit, unequally matched against such an enemy as Ferdinand, the one weak point outweighed all the fine qualities and noble virtues; and he lived, alas! to be that most miserable, most abject of all human things, a dethroned, exiled, despised king!