The Gate of Justice was built by King Yusef Abul Hagiag, about the year of our Lord 1348: it owes its name to the custom the Mussulmans have of rendering justice on the threshold of their palaces; this custom possesses the advantage of being very majestic, and of allowing no one to enter the inner courts; for the maxim of Monsieur Royer-Collard, which says that "Private life ought to be walled in," was invented ages ago by the inhabitants of the East--that country of the sun, whence all light and wisdom come. The name of tower might be given more properly than that of gate to this construction of King Yusef Abul Hagiag; for it is in reality a large square tower, rather high, and through which there is a large hollow arch in the form of a heart, to which a hieroglyphic key and hand, cut in two separate stones, impart a stern and cabalistic air. The key is a symbol held in great veneration by the Arabs, on account of a verse in the Koran beginning with the words "He has opened," and of several other hermetic significations; the hand is destined to destroy the influence of the Evil Eye, the _jettatura_, like the little coral hands which they wear at Naples as pins or watch appendages, to avert the power of sinister looks. There was an ancient prediction which asserted that Granada would never be taken until the hand had seized the key: it must be owned, however, to the shame of the prophet, that the two hieroglyphics are still in the same places; and that Boabdil, _el rey chico_, as he was called on account of his small stature, uttered outside the walls of conquered Granada the historical groan, _suspiro del Moro_, which has given its name to a rock of the Sierra de Elvira. This massive and embattled tower, glazed with orange and red on a stiff sky-blue ground, and having behind it a whole abyss of vegetation, with the city built on a precipice, while beyond it are long ranges of mountains streaked with a thousand hues, like those of African porphyry, forms a truly majestic and splendid entrance to the Arabian palace. Under the gate is a guard-house, and poor ragged soldiers now take their siesta in the same place where the caliphs, seated on sofas of gold brocade, with their black eyes motionless in their marble faces and their hands buried in the folds of their silky beards, listened with a thoughtful and solemn air to the complaints of the believers. An altar, surmounted by an image of the Virgin, stands against the wall, as if to sanctify at the very entrance this ancient abode of the worshippers of Mahomet.