In our search through the intricate plan of the pile, we find ourselves in the boudoir of the Sultana, the windows of which command the same prospect over the Vega, a scene to which distance lends its greatest charm. We are reminded on every side of the luxury of the olden time, when we see the apertures in the white marble floor near the entrance, through which perfumes arose from drugs, which tradition says were burned beneath the floor to make the air of the lady's apartment redolent with their sweet scents. We look down into the garden of the Lindaraja, upon which Irving also looked when he occupied those apartments which have become historic on his account. The garden itself is scarcely worthy of notice, for it is a little-cultivated court; but near by are the baths of the Sultans, with their delicate filigree work, intricate tracery, and brilliant mosaics. There is the fountain which ripples in gentle cadence, as if keeping time to the harmony that the musicians poured down from the balconies when the ladies of the harim enjoyed the pleasures of the Oriental bath, or rested themselves upon cloth of gold. Each bath, cut from a single mass of white marble, was placed in its own vaulted chamber, and lighted through openwork of stars and roses. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CITY OF GRANADA] Perhaps the most celebrated portion of the entire palace is the Court of the Lions, which occupies a space somewhat smaller than that of the Court of the Myrtles. One hundred and twenty-eight white marble columns, arranged by threes and fours in symmetrical fashion, support galleries which rise to no very lofty height; but the extreme gracefulness and elegance of their varied capitals, the delicate traceries, the remnants of gold and colour, the raised orange-shaped cupolas, the graceful minarets, the innumerable arches, beautiful in their labyrinthine design, the empty basin into which the twelve stiff and unnatural "lions" once poured their constant streams of cooling waters, the alabaster reservoir, constitute a whole that poetry and romance have lauded even to extravagance. From this beautiful court, through a door ornamented with rare designs, one is ushered into the Hall of the Abencerrages, named from the legend that in its precincts the chiefs of that family were beheaded by order of Boabdil. Convenient spots in the stone floor are exhibited to credulous visitors as evidences that the blood was there spilt. The sweet and peaceful light which enters the apartment by sixteen airy windows in the star-shaped stalactite roof, illuminating its arches ornamented in azure and scarlet, seem all inappropriate to such a scene of slaughter, and charity would lead us, if history did not, to doubt that the stain should rest upon the memory of Boabdil.