Nor was the impression lessened as he passed through the Court of Lions, followed by a band of swarthy attendants, black-skinned Ethiopians and Nubians, naked but for a white cloth about their loins, and noted the giant forms of the marble lions filled with leaden pipes, which support the double basins, to the verge of which the fountain rises; the Arab porticoes and pavilions around the court, light as air, and range upon range of snowy arches, worked with the fineness of a chiselled cup. If architecture at all, an Oriental fantasia, utterly unreal! the splendour of the Hall of Justice, of the Abencerrages, which follows on either side, with long vistas of many-domed halls opening into other _patios_, where violets, roses, and orange-trees blaze in the light, entered by portals glowing with brilliant mosaics, a low arch, specially pointed out to him by a noble Moor, more courteous than the rest, in the Hall of Justice, as leading to the place of execution. Whether intended as a hint to him of his danger, or of the swift course of justice towards the condemned, did not appear. At any rate, Don Juan remained perfectly unmoved; he had confessed before he started, and his life belonged to his sovereign--but when he was joined by a flippant emir, oiled and combed, who ventured to enter into an argument against the Christian faith, and especially the folly of believing in the immaculate conception of the Virgin, forgetting all the prescribed bearing of an envoy, he dealt him a sounding blow on the head with his sheathed sword. In an instant a noise like thunder swept through the court, and the long lines of white arcades, at the back of the pavilion, were darkened by masses of Africans, black as night, stolid, passionless, their silver breastplates and long earrings shining on their dark skins, carrying immense clubs, studded with brazen nails. In advance the captain, the fatal bowstring hanging on his arm, and his eyes turned to obey the gesture of command to torture or to slay. But Muley Hassan, better instructed in the usages of courts, instantly sent orders to respect the person and freedom of an ambassador while in his court; and so Don Juan departed safely by the way that he had come. The night attack on Jaén followed the defiance borne by Don Juan--a cruel onslaught on a defenceless town, the fierce old Muley Hassan turning a deaf ear to all remonstrance. This was succeeded by the no less cruel assault of the sovereigns on the castle of Alhama near Granada (described in the ballad _Ay de mi Alhama_), by Ponce de Leon, Marqués de Cadiz, one of Ferdinand’s most valiant captains; and the long Moorish war, destined to last ten years, began in earnest. [Illustration: THE TOWN GATE OF THE CARMEN AT ZARAGOZA. (Left as a permanent memorial of the siege.)] CHAPTER XXV The Siege of Granada Ferdinand, to whom war was a pastime, had taken the field with all the pomp and circumstance of a tournament.