He was received with the greatest courtesy and kindness, and while he was being feasted at the palace, his followers, who had been selected for their acuteness and proficiency in all the arts of deception, mingled in disguise with the people and ascertained their sentiments towards the ruling powers. The information obtained was most favorable to the plans of Motadhid. Under a delusive appearance of contentment a wide-spread hatred of the African domination was found to exist; and, by a judicious distribution of the gold with which they were provided, his attendants experienced no difficulty in purchasing the support of a number of influential officials, through whose assistance, at the designated time, the strongholds of the two Berber sovereigns were to be betrayed. Amidst the repeated and prolonged festivities to which his visit had given rise, the ability of Motadhid to resist the intoxicating fumes of wine stood him in good stead among revellers whose convivial propensities and experience were fully equal to his own. In the midst of a prolonged debauch immediately preceding his intended departure, the crafty prince pretended to be overcome with sleep. As soon as his heavy breathing indicated loss of consciousness, his perfidious hosts began to discuss, deliberately and in whispers, the propriety of his assassination. The infamy of this proposal, sufficiently flagitious of itself, was increased by the fact that among the Berbers, as well as the Arabs, hospitality was regarded as the most noble of virtues, and the person of a guest who had eaten at the board of his entertainer was, for the time being, inviolably sacred. The few moral sensibilities originally possessed by the Berbers had, however, amidst the commotion of incessant conflict and through familiarity with the insidious artifices constantly employed by the mixed and demoralized population of the Peninsula, been effectually destroyed. According to the unscrupulous maxims of their policy universally entertained and constantly practised, considerations of present expediency far outweighed the obligations of social courtesy or the dictates of personal honor. The opportunity of delivering themselves at a single blow and without personal risk from the most powerful and implacable enemy of their race was too fortunate and unexpected to be sacrificed to a mere question of casuistry or sentiment by men long habituated to deeds of treachery and violence. Of all the assemblage only one, Moadh-Ibn-Abi-Corra, a youth of the most distinguished rank, had the principle and the courage to remonstrate. The indignant reproaches of their young companion, not yet sufficiently practised in duplicity and crime to overcome the impulses of a noble and generous nature, prevailed over the base resolve of the other princes, and realizing, in spite of their blunted faculties, the flagrant enormity of the project, they quietly abandoned it. While the discussion