The penetrating sagacity of Abul-Kasim had early foreseen the impending misfortune as well as the appropriate remedy. The method he pursued in the application of that remedy does great credit to his political ingenuity and administrative genius. It was apparent at a glance that he himself, as the head of a coalition, would not receive the support of even those whose property and liberties were in imminent peril. Prejudice against the obscurity of his birth, jealousy of his talents and his authority, fear of the consequences of his ambition, would prevent that general co-operation of all factions indispensable to success. He therefore resolved to avail himself of a threadbare artifice, which had already more than once been practised with surprising results by unscrupulous aspirants to power. He determined to again resurrect the unfortunate Hischem II., by the assistance of his name rescue the Peninsula from the threatened Berber domination, and, having consolidated its scattered fragments, to claim as his own reward the sovereignty of the restored khalifate. The fate of the royal puppet of Al-Mansur had never been absolutely ascertained. One account--probably the most correct one--declared that he had perished when Cordova was sacked by the Berbers. Another attributed his death to the relentless cruelty of the tyrant Suleyman. The tales of mendacious travellers, who declared that they had seen and conversed with him in Arabia and Palestine, were eagerly received and industriously circulated by the ignorant populace, powerfully influenced by every tale of wonder and mystery. The attachment of all classes to the memory of this degenerate monarch was extravagant and almost inexplicable. He was endowed with none of those splendid qualities which are commonly associated with the office of royalty. Retained for years in rigid seclusion and veiled whenever he appeared in public, his features and his demeanor were alike unfamiliar to his subjects. The selfish and unprincipled ambition of an aspiring minister had, by the application of every device of sensual pleasure, reduced a mind of more than ordinary parts to the verge of imbecility. Of the innumerable and brilliant achievements of his nominal reign not one could be even indirectly attributed to his personal influence or to his counsel. The lustre which illuminated the throne of Hischem II., whose victorious standards moved forward with unbroken success for almost a generation, was only the reflected glory of the hajib, Al-Mansur. But personal disadvantages and misfortune rather enhanced than diminished his popularity, which grew with the progress of time. Amidst the confusion and wide-spread disaster of foreign invasion and intestine conflict, the intellectual defects and abandoned vices of the last of the Ommeyades were forgotten. Only the military triumphs and domestic security of a period made illustrious under his auspices now appealed to the sympathy and the pride of the persecuted nobles,