The triumph of the Beni-Abbad was, however, of short duration. Mamun, who determined to secure by stratagem what he could not gain by force, enlisted the services of Ibn-Ocacha, a personage of considerable abilities and unsavory reputation, who had, in a long career of crime, successively exercised the congenial employments of assassin, highwayman, and soldier of fortune. The government of Cordova had been nominally committed to Abbad, heir-apparent of the royal house of Seville; but the power in reality was vested in Mohammed, an officer whose distinguished merit in the profession of arms was obscured by the vices of brutality, licentiousness, perfidy, and avarice. His conduct provoked the resentment of the people, a feeling which even the amiable qualities of Abbad were insufficient to counteract; and the suggestions of Ibn-Ocacha found a ready acceptance among a population whose inclination to sedition, transmitted through many generations of revolutionists, had become hereditary and habitual. In the midst of a terrible storm, and in the dead of night, Ibn-Ocacha, with a band of outlaws and desperadoes, was admitted by his fellow-conspirators into the fortifications of Cordova. As they approached the palace of the governor the alarm was given, and Abbad, half clad and without his armor, at the head of a few attendants, bravely confronted the assailants who sought his life. A desperate conflict followed; the valor of the prince aroused the fear of his ferocious enemies; they began to waver; when he lost his footing upon the pavement, slippery with blood, and fell prostrate, to be instantly pierced with a score of weapons. At daybreak, his head having been raised upon a pike, the soldiers took to ignominious flight; the fickle multitude greeted with execrations the features they had so recently admired; the aristocracy and the merchants embraced a cause which might afford protection to their persons and their estates; and, Ibn-Ocacha having convoked the citizens in the mosque of Abd-al-Rahman, the vast assemblage proclaimed, with vociferous but hollow acclamations, their doubtful allegiance to the Emir of Toledo. Intelligence of the success of the enterprise having been communicated to Mamun, he at once repaired to the scene of his final triumph, the famous city so indissolubly associated with the glories and the misfortunes of the Moorish empire. He was hailed as a deliverer by the people that crowded the streets, whose fidelity had been so often tested and so often found wanting as to have passed into a proverb. Ibn-Ocacha received the rewards due to the distinguished services he had rendered, but the high-spirited Mamun shrank from daily contact with a notorious criminal, and his soul revolted at the insolent familiarity of an assassin whose hands had been unnecessarily stained with royal blood. His feelings could not be concealed from the object of his contempt; in an unguarded moment