This succession of fateful incidents connected with the career of one who was destined to be the last to sit upon a Moorish throne in Spain is here recounted because the events give at once an insight into the strength and the weakness of the Moorish womanly character, with all its ardent love and spiteful hate, with its loyalty and its trickery, its hopes and its fears. It was Ferdinand, with his wife Isabella, who was destined to return to the Spaniards the possession of their land, so long held by the Moors. The story of the overthrow of Boabdil is a narrative of chivalry and real pathos. Boabdil, standing on a spur of the Alpuxarras, with his mother Ayesha by his side, looked back upon the glory of his lost dominion. The towers of the Alhambra loomed up before him, and the rich and fertile Vega stretched out before his eyes for the last time. "_Allahu Akbar_," said he, sorrowfully, "God is most great," and burst into tears. "Well may you weep like a woman," said Ayesha, "for that which you were unable to defend like a man." This final standing place of the last of the Moorish rulers in Spain is still known as El Ultimo Sospiro del Moro--"the last sigh of the Moor." The standard of Castile and Aragon by the side of the Cross has supplanted the crescent of Islam; and Ferdinand, with Isabella, knelt in the Alhambra and gave thanks to God, while the Spanish army knelt behind them, and the royal choir chanted a _Te Deum_. Had Isabella been more gracious and kept faith with the infidel, the lot of the vanquished had been less sorrowful. When the Moors were driven out from the home that had been theirs for more than seven eventful centuries, none suffered more than did the proud Moorish ladies. It is creditable, however, to their Spanish victors that they preserved as a part of their own national literature many of the ballads of the vanquished Moors. Lines from the Moorish _Lament for the Slain Celin_ are expressive of the wail of maid and mother at the loss of their former glory and their expulsion from the place they had so long held: "The Mooress at the lattice stands--the Moor stands at the door One maid is wringing of her hands and one is weeping sore. Down to the dust men bore their heads, and ashes black they strew Upon their broidered garments of crimson, green and blue." The aged women also had their hopes stricken low by the downfall of their people: "An old, old woman cometh forth, when she hears the people cry, Her hair is white as silver, like horn her glazed eye." The fall of Granada brought bitterness to many a heart. The words of the ballad, _Woe is Me_! translated from the Spanish by Lord Byron, might well depict the feeling of the hour: "Sires have lost their children--wives, Their lords,--and valiant men, their lives." The aged Moor, pacing to and fro before the king, pours out his plaint: