apology or compensation; and this arbitrary invasion of the rights of a subject raised up for Ibn-Ommeyah an implacable enemy. The ambition of the beautiful Zahrâ, who aspired to the position of Sultana, was disappointed by her continuance in an inferior rank, and, her hopes thus blasted, she found in her former master a pliant and serviceable instrument of revenge. The support of other malcontents, dissatisfied with the cruelty and arrogance of their king, was readily secured; the fears of the royal guard of six hundred Turks were excited by an ingenious, but discreditable, stratagem; and Ibn-Ommeyah, torn from the arms of his women and thrown into prison, perished miserably before morning at the hands of the executioner. His death seemed not entirely unjustifiable, for he proclaimed with his last breath his secret and unshaken belief in the Christian religion. The hypocrisy, which, for the sake of luxury and power, could feign attachment to a creed that upon the slightest pretext it was ready to betray, was not unworthily punished by the treachery of a slave. Ibn-Abu, a cousin of Ibn-Ommeyah, succeeded to the empty honors and dangerous responsibilities of a tottering throne. The treasures of the palace and the seraglio were divided among the conspirators. The guards, whose fidelity to the new administration was suspected, were disbanded; the unpopular officials, deprived of the power which they had abused and the wealth which they had accumulated by extortion and perfidy, were despoiled and exiled; and the new King, crowned at Lanjar with all the pomp which the limited resources that a fugitive court and an impoverished treasury could command, assumed, with an appearance of confidence, the direction of a government divided against itself and confronted with the combined and resistless power of the Spanish monarchy.