Here gallants held it little thing for ladies' sake to die, Or for the Prophet's honour, and pride of Soldanry; For here did valour nourish and deeds of warlike might Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight. The gardens of thy Vega, its fields and blooming bowers-- Woe, woe! I see their beauty gone, and scattered all their flowers! No reverence can he claim--the king that such a land hath lost-- On charger never can he ride, nor be heard among the host; But in some dark and dismal place, where none his face may see, There weeping and lamenting, alone that king should be.[30] [Illustration] XIV. BEARING THE CROSS. Boabdil's "last sigh" was but the beginning of a long period of mourning and lamentation for the luckless Moors he had ushered to destruction. At first, indeed, it seemed as if the equitable terms upon which Granada had capitulated would be observed, and freedom of worship and the Mohammedan law would be upheld. The first archbishop, Hernando de Talavera, was a good and liberal-minded man, and forcible conversion formed no part of his policy. He strictly respected the rights of the Moors, and sought to win them over by force of example, by uniform justice and kindness, and by conforming as far as possible to their ways. He made his priests learn Arabic, and said his prayers in the same ungodly tongue, and by such concessions "so wrought on the minds of the populace that in 1499, when Cardinal Ximenes was sent by the queen to aid him in the work, it seemed as if the scenes which occurred at Jerusalem in the infancy of the Faith were about to be reenacted at Granada. In one day no less than 3,000 persons received baptism at the hands of the Primate, who sprinkled them with the hyssop of collective regeneration."[31] Ximenes was little in harmony with the archbishop's soft ways: he was the apostle of the Church Militant, always most active when militant meant triumphant, and would have the souls of these "infidels" saved from hell fire whether they liked it or no. He insinuated in Isabella's holy mind the pernicious doctrine that to keep faith with infidels was breaking faith with God; and it is one of the few blots on the good queen's name that she at length consented to the persecution of the Moors--or "Moriscos," as they now began to be called.