Zoraya soon acquired complete ascendency over the mind of Muley Abul Hassan. "She was as ambitious as she was beautiful, and, having become the mother of two sons, looked forward to the possibility of one of them sitting on the throne of Granada." Zoraya succeeded in gathering about her a faction, who were drawn to her by her foreign and Christian descent. These were anxious to assist her in her ambition and that of her sons, as they arrayed themselves against Boabdil and his mother. The latter, however, were not without their ardent supporters. There were engendered jealousies that were inveterate and hatreds that were deep. Intriguing was the order of the day. Fearing that a plot would succeed in deposing Muley Abul Hassan and in putting Boabdil upon the throne of his father, the prince, together with his mother, was thrown into prison and confined in the tower of Cimares. Hassan resolved not only to set the stars at defiance and to prove the lying fallacy of the horoscope, but to silence at once and for all, by the executioner's sword, the ambitions of his son Boabdil. But here the versatility of Ayesha again asserted itself. She at once began to make a way for Boabdil's escape. "At the dead of night she gained access to his prison, and, tying together the shawls and scarfs of herself and her female attendants, lowered him down from a balcony of the Alhambra to the steep, rocky hillside which sweeps down to the Darro. Here some of her devoted adherents were waiting to receive him, who, mounting him upon a swift horse, spirited him away." The young man, acting under the advice of ambitious friends and relatives, began to make preparations for war; and his own mother encouraged his heart and equipped him for the field, giving him her fond benediction as she lovingly girded his scimiter to his side. But his young bride wept, as she tried to fancy the ills that might befall him in so uneven a conquest. "Why dost thou weep, daughter of Ali Altar?" asked the invincible Ayesha; "these tears become not the daughter of a warrior, nor the wife of a king. Believe me, there lurks more danger for a monarch within the strong walls of a palace than within the frail curtains of a tent. It is by perils in the field that thy husband must purchase security on his throne." But Morayma, daughter of Ali Altar, found it hard to be comforted; and as her husband, the prince, departed from the Alhambra, she took her place at her _mirador_, and then, overlooking the Vega, she watched the departing loved one, whom she thought never to see again, as his forces vanished from her sight, and "every burst of warlike melody that came swelling on the breeze was answered by a gush of sorrow."