The usurper soon became the enfeebled voluptuary of the harem, and the arm that was as strong as Hercules in the battlefield became as weak as a woman’s when love, not war, was the passion of the hour. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The cities of the Moors no longer were in league, but each, jealous of the rest, was in succession sieged and sacked. At last Granada stood alone in its independence and its impending ruin. Mohammed Ibu Otsman had bowed his neck to the Queen of Castile, and the Alhambra was the only Moorish gem which remained to be transferred to the Christian crown. Ferdinand of Arragon, by marriage with Isabella of Castile, formed at once a union of hearts and arms that prepared the way for the overthrow of the last remnant of Moorish power in Spain. Columbus, repulsed from his native country, had strangely sought aid in this distracted land. As if a higher will than his own were directing his weary steps, he had pursued these conquerors of the Moors over the mountains, and found them in their tents within sight of the red towers on the heights of Granada. They had other conquests than of unknown worlds in view. The prize they sought was gleaming, like a sun, between them and the snows of Sierra Nevada. They turned a deaf ear, in the din of war, to the tales of the adventurous sailor. And he went away. He had gone a day’s journey on his solitary way to Seville and had reached Loja, where we had fleas and cake for our lunch this morning, when a messenger from the queen arrested his steps and brought him back to the royal presence and favor. They gave him the blessing and the gold he needed, and then they conquered the Moors, and Granada, with its Alhambra, fell into their hands. And in the same year Columbus gave them a new world in the West. Years and years since, even in the long time ago when the sunny days of childhood were yet in the glow of their noon, I remember wondering “what the Alhambra is.” It had to me then, and all the way along the lengthening years of life, a dreamy rather than a real existence, and if at times I read its story, the “Tales of the Alhambra” rather increased than weakened the sense of dream-life in which alone it was to be enjoyed.